Google Labs: Google Video and Google Suggest - Among the sub sites at Google is "Google Labs." If you go into Labs you'll discover an entirely new list of experimental Google sites and projects. Two that I'm most interested in are Google Video and Google Suggest. Google Video is a search engine that searches the closed caption feeds from various television channels and creates incremental screen grabs from the show being indexed. Coming soon they hope to provide video clips. A possible point of application for PR firms is to search occurrences of a clients name to find out when they are being mentioned in the news or television media.

Google Suggest is an interesting idea. As you type in a search word or phrase into the search box Google provides suggestions in a drop down bar. Type in "oranges" and you'll see, among other recommendations, "oranges nutrition," "oranges calories," etc. Continue to type "oranges f..." and Google, in real time, adjusts the list to provide suggestions with the second word beginning with the letter "f" like "oranges fruit", "oranges facts", "oranges florida," or "oranges fiber." The list is continually refined until you find what you're looking for.


This is hardly a comprehensive review of the things that Google is up to. But it does provide an idea of where things are headed as Google strives to fulfill its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." All these capabilities are very new, yet it's amazing how far we've already come. Given the degree of competition and capitalization flowing the into the search engine market, we can expect this to be only the tip of the iceberg.