Mountain View, California — In a flurry of major announcements as promised, Google on Monday revived the nature and scope of Internet search, unveiling considerable changes to its dominant search engine Google with some new features, including real-time search results, voice-driven translation, and image recognition capabilities with refurbished focus on mobile search, a move likely to leave competitors wondering what hit them.
As part of its much-awaited move into the real-time search arena with a new latest results feature, the search giant said that over the next few days Google its users would begin viewing search results with brand-new tweets, blog items, news articles and social networking updates drawn each second from sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
Unlike the rest of Google’s nitty-gritty Web presentation, latest results will be dynamic and presented in a scrolling view, with new updates swooshing in as they are captured by Google’s gravitational pull. The integration of real-time Twitter updates into Google search is potentially huge. It ads a wealth of information to the world’s most popular search engine, for better or for worse.
In the past it took some time for updates to get filtered into Google’s results from these social networks and blogs.
Google’s VP of engineering Vic Gundotra and Google Fellow Amit Singhal made the announcements during Google’s 3rd annual review of Internet search technology, an event the company calls “Searchology,” at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, introduces several new features at a press event in Mountain View, Calif., on Monday.
“Understandably in today’s world, that is not fast enough,” Singhal, said at a press conference here. “Information is being posted at a pace we have never seen before, and in this environment, seconds matter.”
A search for “Copenhagen” on Google, for example, where discussion on global climate is taking place, produces the standard Web results, but with a box in the middle of the page where blog items, press releases, news articles and tweets scroll past.
The box updates every few seconds. A tweet from Tom Nguyen (@tomng) in the Bay Area read: “It is snowing in North Beach. Explain that, Copenhagen.” Searching for “Pearl Harbor” on Monday, the 68th anniversary of the attack, turned up tweets from people who were memorializing those who died there, while the live results for “Tiger Woods” were less family-friendly.
Singhal mentioned that real-time search is “one of the most exciting things I have seen in my career.” And to judge by the applause in a room full of normally skeptical tech reporters, Singhal was not the only person present to recognize the impact of Google’s technical accomplishments.
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of search products and user experience, presided over the event and described it as a look at the future of search and search innovation.
Search, according to her, “is not just about 10 blue links. It is about the best answers.”
Google in a video preview of Latest Results revamp, suggests that you will be able to use this to check out traffic conditions, get a current localized weather report, or find out why those people outside your window are making enough noise to wake the dead:
Mayer stated that Google has been concentrating on four aspects of search: modes, media, language, and personalization.
New modes of searching, such as voice-driven and image-driven search, represent a major new commitment for Google, an empire built-on keyword search ads.
Microsoft has also announced partnerships with Twitter on Oct. 21, to make live updates available in the Bing search engine, but Google took the initiative at fully integrating tweets into search results.
The latest Google features would be most helpful in broadcasting breaking news events like earthquakes, when people are looking for constantly updated information without having to examine multiple sources, said Danny Sullivan, editor of the blog Search Engine Land.
Mayer refused to talk about whether Google was paying for access to this content. Real-time search may not be immediately available to all users, but should be accessible within a day or so.
More information on Google real-time search is available here.