Lay back, take your cup of coffee and search the Web

Google Viewer & Google WebQuotes
= breakthrough tool
Online Search Engine
FREE

The Google Labs offer you two online protoypes to showcase their new ideas for the future of the Google search engine:

1) Google Viewer and
2) Google WebQuotes

You can enter your search terms as usual, but you will get search results pages that differ a lot from the ones you are used to.

The Google Viewer results page does not only show you the links to Web pages, but provides you also with a live preview of the Web page itself. The results page is made up like a slideshow; one search result is displayed after the other. You can easily change the speed of the slideshow, stop it and start it again. Google Viewer could be particularly valuable if you are doing research in a field that is new for you. You do not have to stress yourself by non-stop clicking on every available search result. Instead, you can watch the site previews relaxedly until a promising preview appears.

 

 

On the Google WebQuotes results page every search result is accompanied by comments third parties made about the respective Web site. These comments can help you to decide if the link could be useful for you or not and they can provide you with important information about the Web sites credibility. You can choose yourself how many comments you would like to see along with the search results.

I'v entered the term "Usability" into the WebQuotes search box and specified that I want to see a maximum of four comments on resulting pages. The first result I got was Jakob Nielsen's Web site Useit.com. Among the four comments displayed was the following one from Usernomics:

"useit.com is Jakob Nielsens Website dealing with usable information technology. Contains news, alerts, reports, and application examples. Highly recommended."

A little link behind the search result told me that 214 comments on this site are available altogether and brought me to a page where all of these comments were displayed.

Google Viewer and Google WebQuote respond to very particular user needs and add further to Google's overall Usability.