It is finally happening: The ever-expanding Google Inc. is making its move on the federal government.
The U.S. government is finally getting some information out of Google. The search company plans to announce a new online product aimed at being a one-stop shop for searching federal government Web sites.
Google has not only become a responsible corporate citizen through buying its own home but the search leader has launched itself into specialty search areas such as Shakespeare and the US Government.
The launch of Google U.S. Government Search, http://usgov.google.com, targets federal employees who often need to search across several government agencies. Although the site reportedly aims to make finding information easier for US federal, state and local government employees, the information should also prove to be useful for the general public.
Much has been made of potential competition between usgov.google.com and the already well established site Firstgov.gov, which is powered by MSN. However, at first glance the sites appear to be as different to the home pages of Google and Yahoo.
For example, a search of the word "highway" on the site returned links to the Federal Highway Administration and the California Highway Patrol. Another for "Iraq" returned links to Library of Congress documents and The World Factbook, a collection of country profiles published annually by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The site is also designed to help citizens navigate convoluted pages of government-speak and tailors news feeds to their interests. Users can customize the layout of their page to remain updated on government-related news from official and commercial sources, including the White House, Department of Defense, The Washington Post and CNN. Google is also working with agencies to increase the frequency of news updates to keep content current.
People are moving away from directory access to enter these sites, said Kevin Gough, product manager for Google U.S. Government Search. "They just want to type in a few words to pinpoint the information they need."
The new search site reflects Google’s intense interest in Washington. In October, 2005, Google announced the hiring of Alan Davidson to lobby for the company’s policy interests. Since then, the company’s representatives have made themselves heard on issues like "net neutrality." And during this time, government agencies like, the Department of Justice has been intensely interested in Google and its vast store of information.
The latest manifestation of Google’s federal focus is its recent hiring of Mike Bradshaw as head of federal sales. Bradshaw is operating out of the company’s Herndon, VA office where he is working to get Google’s enterprise products into government agencies.
The product is an outgrowth of the company’s flagship site, which has the largest share of the U.S. search market — 50 percent in April, according to Nielsen-NetRatings. It aims to "unify disparate Web sites," Gough said, so people have a single source to find everything from Social Security policy to income tax forms.
While the Google site has the trademark spartan search engine interface, the Firstgov.com home page has the characteristics of an information portal with all the associated clutter of rich content. For this reason; those looking to do a quick search for government information are likely to visit the new Google site just like they tend to do in the wider non-government world.
Gough said he expects Google’s product to "complement" FirstGov without directly competing with it.
But Google’s name recognition, especially among first-time users, may give it an edge over FirstGov, said Larry Freed, president of ForeSee Results Inc., a Michigan firm that measures customer satisfaction of Internet sites.
The new site could actually drive traffic away from other government-related search engines that buy ads on Google’s main search engine, he said.
Many government employees’ access documents and information through agencies’ intranets, or inter-office Web sites, and through FirstGov, said Stephanie Zaiser, communications director for the National Association of Government Employees.
Google drives a fair amount of traffic to those sites, he said. Now that Google has its own portal that serves the same purpose, they could potentially be creating competition for their customers.
But they may switch to the new engine if it is easier to use, she said. Zaiser expects federal employees to use the Google site because of the company’s "ubiquitous presence" in the search-engine market.
More than 87 million unique visitors used Google’s search engine in May, compared with 443,000 that searched FirstGov, according to Nielsen-NetRatings.
While it is busily launching new specialty search sites, Google has apparently been doing a bit of soul searching about what to do with all the cash it has in the bank. As a result, the search company is about to make a US$319 million withdrawal in order to acquire its’ currently rented Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View known as the Googleplex.
There is a trend toward developing more finite, category-specific searches, said Deborah Fallows, senior research fellow at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Government employees are among the heaviest users of government Web sites, so there’s a market."
A November 2004 Pew survey found that 54 percent of Internet users have looked for information from government Web sites, and 10 percent of users will look for such information on any given day.
Other similar search engines include http://govspot.com, http://searchgov.com and http://govengine.com.
It is the latest in a series of specialized content sites developed by Google, which also launched a search engine devoted to Shakespeare this week.