It has been a busy week in the search engine world. Microsoft launched Bing (their decision engine) and now Google has announced a new feature from the Google Labs which builds search results into a table like in a spreadsheet.
If you wanted to search for something simple, say the capital of Argentina. Type that phrase into Google and you get your answer and links to pages like Wikipedia telling you more about Buenos Aires and Argentina.
But what if you wanted a list of all the capital cities in Europe? You might know several of them, but to get a full list you would need to enter 20 or more queries asking the capital of each country. This is where Google Squared comes to the rescue. You can enter a query like ‘capital cities in Europe’ and Google Squared will build a spreadsheet like results page where you can add rows and columns and build up a table of your results.
Although it can be tedious, gathering facts from across the Internet is relatively easy for us humans to do. But getting a computer to do it is a lot more difficult. This is Google’s first step in trying to meet this challenge. Google Squared essentially searches the web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way.
Google Squared is by no means perfect, but if you are looking to build a table of results it is a good place to start.
Here are some queries which are fun to try:
Why don’t you give Google Squared a try and let us know what you think of it? Just use the comment box below.
3 thoughts on “Google Goes Square; Search Results in a Spreadsheet Form”
I like this. Lots of fun.
Search for ‘planets’ and under ‘Saturn’ you’ll get information about cars and under ‘Venus’ you’ll get info on women’s swim wear. Haha.
Unfortunately, Pluto doesn’t return info on the Disney dog :(
wonderful. all my reporting just got a lot easier :)
Google Squared appears to be similar to my patent application:
Frankly, I am getting a Déjà vu effect while going through the “Google Squared†application because it appears to be very similar in function to my United States patent application which was filed on April 12, 2007 and as publicly disclosed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 16, 2008, when the patent application was published.
My patent application is titled as “Method And System For Research Using Computer Based Simultaneous Comparison And Contrasting Of A Multiplicity Of Subjects Having Specific Attributes Within Specific Contexts†bearing Document Number “20080256023†and Inventor name “Nair Satheesh†which may be viewed at http://patft.uspto.gov/ upon Patent Applications: Quick Search.
Google Squared appears to be using at least some if not many of the same methods and systems as set forth by me more than two years ago in my patent application. In fact there are many more methods and systems disclosed in my patent application which I believe will help resolve certain inaccuracies found in current Google Squared application.
I have issued legal notices to Google through my Patent Attorney in the US but Google has not responded yet to any of my notices.