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Google's goodies
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The world's no.1 search engine is gearing up for competition by unleashing an array of new goodies including a jumbo-sized free e-mail box
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LAST WEEK saw Google, the web-based Sultan of search engines making a flurry of announcements and providing sneak previews of some upcoming new tools and features. With competition hotting up from rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft, the dominant search engine player has apparently decided to surge ahead in the stakes for Internet eyeballs.
Which is great for you and me, because the more desperate the competition, the heavier the shower of new goodies. Regular Googlers might have noticed last week that a new icon called Froogle appears on its webpage. This is Google's shopping service that has now been fine-tuned. It allows users to search for catalogues of any product they wish to buy. You can refine the search by entering your country or the price range you are looking for. With the latest improvements, Froogle (a pun on the word frugal, or thrifty) enables users to enter personal information so that more relevant results can be delivered. This will make sure that somebody shopping for a mouse (computer) does not get offers to sell him the real rodent.
The main Google search engine has also been beefed up with a new personalised search feature. However, to try out this service, which is still in `beta' or experimental stage, you have to go to Google Laboratories (http://labs.google.com) where a trial version is available.
Users can pick from 216 areas of interest and create a personal profile, which serves as a filter when next they do a normal Google search. For example, you can personalise your area of interest as `Asia' and then do a search on the word `Internet'. Along with the search results, you now get a slider switch on top ranging from minimum personalisation (left) to maximum personalisation (right). As you slide the switch with your mouse, the tens of thousands of results about Internet are filtered and you are left with a few hundred dealing with Internet in Asia. Give it a try. After a few hiccups, you will end up sharply refining your Google searches.
Jumbo e-mailer
Perhaps the biggest thing to come from Google in the near future maybe its new e-mail service called G-mail (www.gmail.com ). Google says that this is a new kind of webmail where you may never need to delete your old messages because your free storage is a jumbo 1000 MB (1GB).
Compare this to the 2-5 MB that most e-mail boxes including paid services offer. And Google being Google, you can search through your messages to find the exact one you are looking for. Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed like a conversation. Finally, Google promises no pop-up ads and no banners.
Going to the G-mail site today will only get you an FAQ because the service has not yet been launched. But you can register your current e-mail and Google will get back to you when is service is ready to launch.
Meanwhile, you can get close and personal with your current Googling - and look forward to the days of mammoth mailboxes.
A. VISHNU
vishnua@hotmail.com
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