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Google Operating System
Unofficial news and tips about Google. A blog that watches Google's latest developments and the attempts to move your operating system online.

  • Google Instant Shortcuts
    Google Instant Search, the feature that shows search results as you type, is now publicly available. According to a press site, "Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the latest browsers (Chrome versions 5 and later, Firefox version 3 and later, Safari version 5 for Mac and Internet Explorer version 8). Please note, users on domains other than Google.com and Google.ru can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account."

    If you don't see the new feature, go to Google's homepage, click on "Google.com in English" and log in to a Google account. If you still don't see it, try this URL: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy.

    When you start to type a query, Google moves the search box to the top of the page and shows a list of 4 suggestions, followed by the search results for the first suggestion. That means you can just type "ny" and get the search results for [ny times] almost instantly. Google shows the predicted query in the search box, but the characters automatically added by Google are grayed out.


    If you intend to type [ny times crossword], you can press Tab or use the right arrow to add "times" to your query and continue typing "crossword". Use the up/down arrows to pick a different suggestion and you'll notice that the results are displayed without having to press Enter.


    The nice thing about the new interface is that you can use the "I'm feeling lucky" much more easily. For example, to visit the top search result for [ny times crossword], select the suggestion using the down arrow and perform "I'm feeling lucky" using the right arrow.

    How to visit New York Times homepage using 4 keystrokes? ny Down Right. How to go to Yelp using 4 keystrokes? ye Down Right.

    Another great thing about the new interface is that the search box always has focus. You never have to click on the search box to add a new word to your query.

    If you don't like Google's suggestions, you can always ignore them and press Enter to find the results for the query that you've typed.

    To sum up:
    Tab/Right arrow = pick the first suggestion
    Up/Down arrow = select another suggestion from the list
    Right arrow while selecting a suggestion = I'm feeling lucky
    Enter or Esc = ignore the suggestions and find the results for your query




  • Try Google Instant Search
    Google will soon release a new interface that shows the results as you type a query. If you want to try the new feature before it's officially released, use this URL: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy.



    My first impression: you can now get useful results after typing a few characters. Google has never been so fast.

    To watch a webcast of Google's search event where streaming search will be launched, visit youtube.com/google.

    Update: The feature is called Google Instant. "Feelings of euphoria and weightlessness are normal. Do not be alarmed."

    "Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press 'search.' Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way."



    { via Zorgloob and Jérôme. }




  • Google Doodle for Today's Launch
    Even if Google said that the particles animation didn't celebrate a special event, it's probably the first time when Google uses doodles to build anticipation before launching a new feature. The doodle was fast, fun and interactive, just like the new search interface that shows results as you type a query.

    Today, Google's homepage has a new doodle that shows a monochrome Google logo. When you start typing your query, Google brings back the color one letter at a time.


    The doodle looks exactly like the new interface for Google Suggest:


    It's now obvious that Google will launch "streaming search" today. Even Google's Twitter account confirms this: "Our doodle is dressing up in its brightest colors for something exciting coming very soon".




  • Google Scribe
    Google launched a very interesting tool that offers suggestions as you type: Google Scribe. It's not exactly the service I anticipated 3 years ago, but Google Scribe works surprisingly well. For example, I started to type "This works sur" and Google suggested "This works surprisingly well", which is exactly what I wanted to type. Instead of typing 14 characters, I could only type "1" or press Enter to select the first suggestion.


    "Google Scribe provides text completion service. Using information from what you have already typed in a document, Google Scribe provides related word or phrase completion suggestions. In addition to saving keystrokes, Google Scribe's suggestions indicate correct or popular phrases to use," explains Google.


    The nice thing about this service is that you don't need to use Google's editor. You can add a bookmarklet to your browser and use Google Scribe in Gmail, Blogger, Google Docs or on any web page that includes text fields.


    Google Scribe only works for English right now, but I'm sure that Google will add many other languages in the future. If you don't like to see suggestions for all the words you type, enable the on-demand mode (Ctrl+Shift+J) and you'll only see suggestions when you press Tab.

    Since Google uses data extracted from web pages, you'll see a lot of strange suggestions like this pattern from Google's navigation bar:


    or this text, which is frequently used on IngentaConnect's site:


    { Thanks, Robert. }




  • Search Chromium's Source Code
    Google Code Search has a special version for searching Chromium's source code. Chromium is the open source project that powers Google Chrome, Chrome Frame, Flock.

    Code Search adds search suggestions, cross-reference detection, a find feature that lets you search inside a file, an option that lets you find a file by name, links to Subversion and related files.


    Google's search engine for source code has a new homepage that shows all the advanced search options:




  • Google's Particles Doodle
    Google's homepage shows another animated doodle, but this time Google doesn't offer any information about the doodle. The homepage animates some particles which are used to create the Google logo.

    It's very likely that the interactive doodle celebrates Google's 12th birthday. Google usually celebrates its birthday on September 7th or September 27th, depending on the year. "Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake."

    Happy Birthday, Google!





    Update (via Blogoscoped Forum): Google says that the animated doodle didn't celebrate an important event. It was fast, fun and interactive, just like Google.




  • Next Week's Google Search Event
    Did you know that Google has an Experimental Happiness team? One of the engineers that are part of this team is Othar Hansson, who is a tech lead for rich snippets and a member of Google's Search UI Group.

    Did you know that Google has a search czar? His name is Ben Gomes. "I think of Ben as our diplomat," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience. "It's Google; it's search. There's a lot of big personalities; there's a lot of opinions, and Ben is the reasonable one that can help build the bridges. When we look back, there was a point where Larry and Sergey really felt like we needed to name a search czar. And there was only one natural choice -- this was back in 2002 -- and that was Ben." According to Mercury News, "Gomes is responsible for shaping the automatic suggestions users get as they begin typing a query, and the few lines of text and links they get back, which Google calls [snippets]".

    Did you know that Google still has more engineers working on search than any other product? Johanna Wright says that "other initiatives, such as Google TV and Android, help move search beyond the desktop and laptop paradigm on to other hardware." Johanna Wright is the "Director of Product Management responsible for Web Search. She oversees the development of Google's search user interface and features and was the initial product lead on Universal Search."

    Did you know that Google's first female engineer was Marissa Mayer? She's now Vice President for Search Products and User Experience.

    Marissa Mayer, Johanna Wright, Ben Gomes and Othar Hansson will speak next Wednesday at a special event about the evolution of Google search. Most likely, Google will also launch some new features and a new interface.

    Google has recently started to test an interface that shows the results as you type the query. The new interface could be launched next week. Shark SEO says that the new UI is especially useful for long-tail searches. "From finding out the best way to deal with MySQL/PHP queries and finding the right Excel formulas, it was just astonishingly, brilliantly useful – it saved me time and led to me finding the right results much faster."




  • Google Chrome Latest Version
    The nice thing about Google Chrome's auto-update feature is that almost all users are running the latest version of the software. This is really important for web developers, who no longer have to worry that a large number of users haven't upgraded from Chrome 2 or Chrome 3. It's not necessary to test a site in multiple versions of Google Chrome and it's safe to use features added in the latest version of the browser.

    Gmail's help center lists the supported browsers and includes the minimum version number required next to each browser, except Google Chrome.


    Unfortunately, even if Chrome installs the latest version, you can't use it until you restart the browser. Google started to add a little orange dot next to the wrench icon and show messages like: "Old school's not cool. Google Chrome is woefully out of date because it hasn't crashed or restarted in a while. Restart Chrome to apply update."


    { The second screenshot is licensed as Creative Commons by Chris Messina. }




  • Better Google Snippets for Movie Sites
    Google's snippets for sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes include more information: movie directors and featured cast members. Google links to the corresponding page for each director and actor, so you can quickly find information about Alfred Hitchcock even if you only remember that he directed The Birds.



    Google already shows rich snippets for reviews, events, recipes, people profiles, but web developers need to add structured HTML content using microformats, HTML5 microdata or RDFa. Even if IMDb doesn't use any of the three formats, Google still manages to extract useful information.




  • What's New in Google Chrome 6?
    Google released the first stable build for Chrome 6. The new version has a simplified user interface: there's a single menu, the "go" button has been removed, the browser no longer shows "http://" in the address bar, the bookmark button has been moved to the right and the toolbar has a new color scheme.



    Chrome 6 adds support for form autofill and you can now synchronize autofill data, extensions and all their settings. Extension sync is probably the coolest new feature in Chrome 6 because you can take your extensions with you, not matter what computer your are using.


    Another new feature is the support for WebM videos. "WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web," which is already supported by software like Opera, VLC, Winamp and by YouTube. Watch this video in Chrome 6 or switch to YouTube's HTML5 player.

    There's also a feature that's disabled by default (probably because it's buggy): the built-in PDF viewer. You can enable it by typing chrome://plugins/ in the address bar and clicking "Enable" next to "Chrome PDF Viewer".

    Some other changes:

    * Chrome has a new shortcut for toggling the bookmarks bar (Ctrl+Shift+B);

    * if you mouse over a link to a page that has a long URL, Chrome will show the entire address in the status bar after about 3 seconds;

    * Chrome's extension manager (chrome://extensions/) links to the extension gallery pages.

    Google automatically updates the browser to the new version, but you can manually check for updates by selecting "About Google Chrome" from the unified menu. If that doesn't work, download Chrome 6 from google.com/chrome.

    Happy 2nd birthday, Google Chrome!