Over the course of the last ten years, using strategies of acquisition, evolution, and domination, Google has solidified itself as THE search engine. When people think Google, the first thing that comes to mind is the biggest search engine in the world.
However, Google does more than just search. Much, much more as it turns out; things you may have heard of and things that you thought were just rumors, Google does them. Google is involved in the technology of multiple different industries, many seemingly unrelated to search.
What is Google’s interest in people’s personal health? The energy consumption of homes? Many of these endeavors are part of a larger strategy to maintain the relevance of Google’s proprietary technologies such as the search algorithm. Others make it hard to discern why Google would invest in a technology that provides seemingly little support to Google’s never ending quest to relevance (recipes?) Presented here are five of Google’s more obscure products, with unknown but speculated upon long-term application.
Google Health
Google has already launched a product that may provide them with a lead in the burgeoning field of health IT. Google Health provides an online environment to maintain your general health information, medical records and wellness goals. Through a network of connected doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, you can import your medical records and prescriptions directly into your Google account. Once users have created an account they can set personal goals and track them using an interface similar to that of Google Analytics. An option is also provided for users to take notes and keep a wellness journal on any medical conditions or goals. The user can also specify a ‘care network’ consisting of doctors and family members with whom to share their medical information
With their Health application, Google provides improved content personalized for the user based on their health conditions and goals. They integrate related content from the news and search engine results with your personal data. The tie in to search engine content provides the potential key to Google’s investment in Google Health. Providing an opportunity to serve medical content and ascertain relevancy may provide an edge in honing the Google algorithm to perfection, and poise Google to serve an ever ageing (and deteriorating) population of internet users.
Recipes
Feeding Google employees must be a gargantuan task, it may also be the impetus behind one of the most recently released Google tools: Google Recipe view. The tool Google provided expands the usual search options of content type, news, images and videos, to include recipes. The expanded functionality allows the user to refine a search as specific to food items or recipes. Prior to the release of Google Recipe view, search queries for a single ingredient of type of cuisine would feature results completely unrelated to recipes, and filtering results by different recipe features was beyond the realm of possibility.
Now, from the search results page recipes can be selected from the left hand panel, and the option to narrow down a search by additional ingredients, cook time, and calorie count is provided. The results also appear differently than traditional results displaying ingredients, ratings and pictures. This advancement in Google search appears to be a fairly straightforward improvement for the millions of users who enjoy cooking at home. Or perhaps it was just a request by the Google executive chef (yes this position exists).
Google PowerMeter
One of the truly obscure and largely unpublicized features Google has created, Google PowerMeter officially works with a multitude of different organizations and non-profits to provide users with information regarding their personal energy consumption. PowerMeter is a free service that simply requires users to sign up. The user’s smart meter then monitors their home or building energy consumption and sends it directly to Google. The tool allows users to track energy consumption over time, predict costs and create an energy budget.
Altruistically, the benefit of PowerMeter is in energy saving. Generating factual and individual records of historical use and cost could potentially lead to a decrease in consumption. Saving on energy means saving money on bills, and it’s even better for the environment. For those of us that view Google a bit more cynically, Google PowerMeter seems to be an excellent way to adjust an algorithm by interpreting data energy use on a case by case basis, with individual users connected and withdrawing from a search engine server power grid at different rates and different times of day.
Person Finder
In the case of Person Finder, my thinking is personalized search is about to go to a whole new level. However, given the current application I will refrain from any further analysis of potential benefit to Google and just present the basic facts.
In the aftermath of a large-scale disaster, two things are relatively inevitable: the break down of traditional communication channels and missing persons. Google has provided a tool to help locate these missing family members and friends. The home page of the tool offers the user two options: ‘I am looking for someone’ or ‘I have information about someone’. All that is required is the name of the missing person. After the name input, the searcher can then look up the status of the person they are searching for. Status options include ‘unspecified’ and ‘someone has reported this person alive’.
The application provides unique, global, and stable two-way communication that streamlines the process of accounting for missing persons after serious disasters. It is important to note that Google does not review or edit any information on the Person Finder. The information is both user submitted and gathered from publicly available information sources. The tool has been utilized most recently to for the earthquake in Japan, but was also used after those in New Zealand and Haiti.
Voice Recognition for Android
In one of Google’s more generous moves, they provided free voicemail to email for Google Voice users, with the option of reviewing your translation.
Pretty thoughtful right? Little did you realize, Google conveniently used the data collected from millions of voices and reviews to create a responsive and accurate voice command system for their mobile operating system.
Google has been utilizing voice recognition software on mobile devices since 2008 and has continually worked on improving usability. Google has used Android to provide voice recognition software that allow verbal commands for a variety of internet uses on mobile devices; including search, email and posting updates to social networks. Android also allows users to dictate text messages and complete commands on their phones such as accessing contact information and opening applications. For further personalization, users of the Android phone can allow download an app from the Android Market that will allow Google to better recognize the unique patterns of their speech.
The application of voice recognition software is unlimited. With the increase in mobile search and smartphone use in general, Google has strategically poised itself to be the most relevant in spoken search queries. Rumor has that voice recognition will soon be used to subtitle YouTube videos, which are already equipped with their own rating system, yielding another level of feedback on the accuracy of voice to text.
Why Does Google Spread Itself so Thin?
Let us not forget, Google’s goal is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful. Relevancy is the ruler of the Google empire, and it would be naïve to think Google is producing tools that don’t benefit it.
However, Google’s potential to use their mammoth engineering team to generate unique solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems should not be belittled. Each of the endeavors above does provide an elegant and effective alternative to the current mode of operation.
At the end of the day Google is a corporation providing a service to the public, a fact that is often obscured by either the perception of saintliness or the spewing of vitriol by outside observers. Use the tools Google gives you, but just remember there’s no such thing as a free lunch.