Alert Blog Reviews

Tell me if you spot any similarities between these two announcements: We’re pleased to announce you that GazoPa enters open beta today. GazoPa is a next generation image search engine that uses image features such as color and shape to search for similar images. And… Today, we’re happy to announce that Similar Images is graduating from Google Labs and becoming a permanent feature in Google Images. Yep, Google’s at it again! No sooner had GazoPa dared to enter the search arena, Google comes along and says “oh no you di’n’t” and takes its Similar Images tool out of Labs. I mean, really, there’s just no subtly when it comes to Google. Dare to enter it’s space, and within hours it’s wrestling the spotlight off any challenger. As usual, Google’s version is either designed for the masses, or barebones, depending on your point of view. Really, your only option is to enter a search query, then refine it to “Find similar images.” Meanwhile, like most Google challengers, GazoPa offers a fuller experience with its tool. As well as searching by query, you can upload an image or even your own hand-drawn sketch! Here’s a two minute demo of GazoPa in action: Now the only question is will searchers flock to GazoPa for its rich feature set or, rather typically, will they stick with the “devil they know” out of convenience or pure laziness?

Read more here:
Google’s At It Again: Releases Diluted Challenger to GazoPa

Search is changing very rapidly these days and it looks like we are going to need to buckle up to keep up with the changes and, even more likely, the rumored changes. Until I can use something myself (which means the rest of you can as well) then it is all rumor. Experimentation is the order of the day in search and especially as it relates to social search and the holy grail of real time search. Since bing and Google have both announced their deals with Twitter regarding using Twitter’s vaunted stream to allow the world to update us with whatever the world deems important (note: while that sounds valuable on the surface I think that getting through the spam and other crap is going to be a pretty big deal for the end user to stomach but that’s for another day I suppose) the talk is all about how we can harness this new age of on-demand information. Google’s Marissa Mayer informally rolled out a Google Labs experiment which was introduced yesterday and reported by TechCrunch At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer unexpectedly came on stage to unveil a new product. She first announced that Google has also reached a deal with Twitter, which she wrote a blog post about earlier in the day, following the announcement that Bing and Twitter had done the same thing. But Mayer had more to share. There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people. Nifty, I suppose. First, let’s define the people that are in many of these networks of ours. How many of them do we really know and also how many are reliable sources of any data to begin with. Not that this idea isn’t interesting it just seems that as we put more and more power into the hands of people with no experience there will be a degree of “train wreckiness” in the results. Also, as some people start to feel some power around being a source I suspect the limits of what is newsworthy will be stretched paper-thin pretty quickly. So enough of the negativity, right? This Google Labs thing could be interesting. It will work with your Google profile and be opt-in for now according to Mayer (which implies later on it won’t be? When it’s not, it will likely end up like the personalized search history that not many are aware of which means more data for Google. Yay.). So this should take place in the next few weeks and we’ll keep our eyes peeled for any updates. When it does happen are you interested?

Originally posted here:
Google’s Social Search for You and Yours