Google Squared: Next Generation Search

Google Squared is officially live, if you haven't heard of what Google Squared is it is pretty muchGoogles Response to Wolframalpha the computational search engine.

Just looking at Google Squared it seems its a pretty neat Idea. But it still obviously is beta since it is in Google Labs. Google Squared gets the squared added to it because it gives you results in an excel type of view; a bunch of squares filled with data....well maybe its more rectangular (MaybeGoogle should change its name to "Google Rectangle")

So far right off the bat I do not know what I would use Google Squared for but it would have been great in high school to use for research projects. Since I didn't know what to search for I decided to try out one of their example searches they had on the Google Squared home page about Presidents. I found the results really cool, and loved how they organized and presented information it was great, definitely an innovative way to organize and display search results.

The one problem I saw with this test search of "US Presidents" was that it presented me the data in no particular order. Yes that data was organized but you think it would have given me the Presidents in order of being president, instead they are ordered; Thomas Jefferson, Washington, Lincholn. If there going to give organized information why not give it in some sort of order?

When performing the search it gives you some basic categories of information on each president. This example search gives you, name, image, description, date of birth, full name, and proceeded by. These are the default categories of information for each president but Google Squared also allows you to add a column, so of course I had to give this a try. I creatively thought, why not see who these important guys were married to. I typed in "wife" to the add category box and boom, instantly knew who each president was married to, now that is some pretty cool and powerful tools. Google is truly the leader in organizing the worlds information.

Although Google Squared is super cool and definitely a stride in the right direction it is no where near perfect. I entered in the search, "US Navy" and got some interesting results. For example, The Marine Corps according to Google displaces 736 inches, and the Good Old Fighting Seabees are only 755mm in length.

If you have not given Google Squared a try head over to Google labs and give it a go. If you find any interesting searches which work really well or are just horrible share them with us in the comments section!