After the snoozefest that was the Google I/O event, today's Inside Search event is a party of amazing search features. Google announced features for both the mobile and desktop space. Get ready to figure where that mystery photo of you was taken.
They began the presentation showing that unlike the desktop, there is no Christmas and Summer search lull for mobile search. So while you're out visiting family and chilling at the beach, you're still utilizing Google search. How else will you know what sort of jellyfish just stung you on the ankle?
To that end, Google is enhancing mobile search starting today. Just navigate to Google.com on your iPhone and you'll see the ability to search for restaurants, bars, cafes and more, based on your location. You can also turn on the ability to utilize Instant Search for sites while you're there.
Google also introduced Voice Search on desktop that wil be available in English, It should start rolling out today and hopefully, will be on your desktop within the next week or so. The feature brings the mic to your Google search field and allows you to speak your search query aloud. So get ready for your coworkers to start yelling at there computers about Twilight conventions and Lindsay Lohan shenanigans.
One feature that smacks of creepy CIA/alien technology Google introduced Google Image Search. Beginning its roll out today, the feature allows you to drag and drop a photo into Chrome at images.google.com and Google will find out where the picture was taken based on the photo. It's like magic combined with sorcery. If you're concerned about your Branson vacation photos becoming part of the Googleverse, Google says the images do not become public when they are used as a search query. So your Yakov Smirnoff images will stay private.
Google then told us that it takes an average of five seconds to load a site page. To help alleviate that time suck, Google introduced Google Instant. The feature preloads sites based on your search query and what Google believes is relevant to your interest. Instead of taking five seconds to load a page, Google Instant loads site pages almost instantly. Unfortunately, it only loads a single page from your search results based on relevance algorithms, but Google is pretty sure, that's the page you want. Instant Search will be available this week in Google Chrome.
Finally, Google demoed Instant Search for images. Like site results, as you type in the Google Image search field you'll be presented with images in real time. Instant Images is available today for the developer version of Chrome, and this week for Google Chrome beta.
Google says the features will come to the Google toolbar and to other browsers in the future, as long as it makes sense. Whatever that means.
