Google Squared (link will be live by the end of May 2009) is the new project from Google that is soon to come out of Google’s R&D showcase known as Google Labs.
Google Squared will deliver search results in spreadsheet format. So what? you may ask. Well, look at the video demo above. Each search query will return an appropriated table of search results which has its own set of columns, i.e. common attributes that are associated with the (prevailing) topic of your search. In a nutshell, Google Squared turned unstructured nature of Internet into structured data. Now that’s big news since it comes from the company that knows about searching information on the internet more than anyone else.
I believe that Google Squared will finally bring the Web 3.0 a.k.a. semantic web to life. Imagine all sort of creative uses of this structured search data by semantic mash-up applications that will allow you to discover information about “any” given topic in a step-by-step fashion or about a pre-selected set of topics in a step or two. All this by combining topic attributes and Google Squared search results with other online resources. After all, having search result metadata (i.e. Google Squared spreadsheet columns) that are related to search results makes search data structured and easier to manage algorithmically and computationally, i.e. using additional software layers on top of this data.
On a side note, even though Wolfram Alpha will be pushed outside the limelight as a result of this new Google’s project. I say this even though I’m aware that Wolfram Alpha is not a direct competitor to either Google Search or Google Squared with its announced capability to offer precise answers to questions that have them based on data on the internet. Google Squared has already become a hot topic in its own right on Google Trends.
I hopeexpect Google will release an API for this at the same time cause I would love to try it out on my Android phone. Yes, I’m becoming a bigger Google (services) fanboy every day and for good reason(s). :-)
The video above was a demo organized for Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.
[via techcrunch]