Google Squared

Google launched their latest service yesterday in Google Labs – something called Google Squared:

“Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed.”

It presents results within a “square” that allows you to quickly and easily compare information associated with each result. If you don’t like the result shown within a row of the square, it’s easy to remove it. Similarly, you can add more rows to your square if the first square doesn’t show enough information.

The data contained within the columns of the square are dependent upon the query. So for “hybrid cars” you’ll see an image, a description, transmission type, engine size, and year of model. For “XBOX games” you’ll see an image, a description, release date, platform and publisher. Again, you can easily remove any given column, or add additional columns that can be selected from the drop down.

We’ve been playing around with it this morning, so here are some of the more interesting things we’ve picked up on.

Planets

The results returned here are very nice, and really show off what Google Squared is capable of.  Results for planets

George Bush

Erm, do Google know something that we don’t?  Results for George Bush

Bing

Poor old Microsoft.  Results for Bing

Greatest Author

D’oh!  Results for Greatest Author

Like what I’ve said here?  Read more from Jonathan Stewart on Twitter