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Google's Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of
Do Googlers dream of electric algorithms? For a little insight into what makes the search engine that became a verb tick, we recently attended a talk by Amit Singhal, one of its chief engineers. Amit is part of the team in charge of tweaking and improving Google's ranking algorithms and has 20 years of experience when it comes to sorting through data, with that time split into even decades spent within the academic sphere and over in Mountain View. What he had to tell us mostly revolved around his aspirations from when he started out back in 1990, but it's the way that Google has acted to meet each of those goals that's the fun and interesting stuff (or as we like to call it around here, the meat). So do put on your reading monocle and join us past the break.%Gallery-97608%
Google to stop censoring Chinese search results 'soon,' China warns of consequences
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is making headway with its plans to stop filtering search results in China. Quoting Eric Schmidt as saying that "something will happen soon," the latest report is that Google is engaged in negotiations with multiple government agencies in China, and the likeliest scenario at this point is that the search giant will remain in the People's Republic, though it may be in a slightly altered state. "There will be a way for Google to not pull out 100%," says a source familiar with the ongoing discussions, who expects that El Goog will find a patchwork arrangement by which it'll be able to maintain some parts of its business running while no longer adhering to China's censorship fiat. For its part, China is keeping up its tough posturing, with the latest statement from its IT ministry describing Google's plans as "unfriendly and irresponsible" and warning that the company will have to bear the consequences of its actions. What appears certain at this point, however, is that there'll be no going back to censored Google search results, which is a win in our books whatever the final outcome.
TomTom submits updated app for Apple review
The makers of the TomTom app for the iPhone have let us know that they've submitted an updated version that adds real-time traffic information, Google local search, and even some secret features the company isn't talking about yet. The TomTom app was eagerly sought out last year, but of late has fallen a bit behind market leader Navigon. This new release, with real-time info and Google local, will give both apps rough feature parity. The current TomTom app is on sale for U.S. $49.99 at the app store (U.S. maps only) and it includes a "free update to the new version as soon as its available." That would indicate that some or all of the new features will be an extra charge for current owners. Version 1.3 will be available as soon as it passes through the App Store vetting process. [Thanks to Steve H. for the tip]
Google Goggles brings visual search to Android; Favorite Places brings QR codes to restaurant reviews
Looks like Google's been busy on the camera tip lately -- not only is it launching a new QR code-based Favorite Places mobile search product today, it's also demoing Google Goggles, a visual search app that generates local results from analyzing mobile phone images. Favorite Places isn't super-complicated, but it sounds like it'll be pretty useful: Google's sent QR code window decals to the 100,000 most researched local businesses on Google and Google Maps, and scanning the code with your phone will bring up reviews, coupons, and offer the ability to star the location for later. (It's not implemented yet, but you'll be able to leave your own reviews in the future.) Google hasn't built this into the Google Mobile app yet, so you'll need something to read QR codes with -- Android devices can use the free Barcode Scanner, and Google and QuickMark are offering 40,000 free downloads of QuickMark for the iPhone today. We just tried it out using QuickMark and it works pretty well -- although we'll wait to see how many QR codes we see in the wild before we call this one totally useful. Google Goggles is a little more interesting from a technology standpoint: it's an Android app that takes photos, tries to recognize what in them, and then generates search results about them. Goggles can recognize landmarks, books, contact info, artwork, places, wine, and logos at the moment, and Google says it's working on adding other types of objects, like plants. Pretty neat stuff -- but how about linking these two services together at some point, guys? Check some videos after the break.
Nokia ties up with Google for search, Yahoo! dies a little inside
It feels like Nokia and Yahoo! have been all buddy buddy for a while now, and indeed, Yahoo!'s been really good about deploying its wares to Nokia's S60 devices in a timely fashion; in the mobile search game, though, it seems a bit of a faux pas to be without Google on board, doesn't it? The world's number ones in their respective industries have announced that Google search capability will be integrated into Nokia's bundled Nokia Search app on all the upcoming models announced at MWC this week and into other handsets in the future. Nokia's playing it nice and straight by saying that the move is all about "providing choices" to its consumers, but let's be honest, if you were going to have one search provider on your phone, it'd probably have to be Google. Speaking of, is it just a coincidence that "Mountain View" rhymes with "Espoo"?
Google's iPhone-specific search website
It appears that Google has released a mobile-accessible search page just for iPhone users, which sent us scratching our heads a bit. Isn't the iPhone supposed to give customers "the real web?" If so, why has Google developed a bare-bones search page that appears to be just for iPhone customers? Perhaps this is a work in progress, but since the Safari browser on the iPhone has no problems going to the normal Google search website or Google's xHTML page, what's the point here? Unless you really (really) want a bare-bones Google search page on that new iPhone that doesn't even feature many of Google's search properties, we suggest hitting www.google.com. Sounds pretty easy to us.[via TUAW]
Yahoo! "jumps ahead" of Google in mobile search
We're not quite sure how Yahoo! claims to have "jumped ahead" of Google in terms of mobile search, but upon investigation here, the Sunnyvale company has unveiled its new "local" search for the first time in the States, delivering locally relevant answers to mobile search queries instead of just relevant but global search results (like Google defaults to with its mobile search). It's true that offering customers search results that are specifically tailored to locality (Yahoo!) instead of a list of relevant but global URLs (Google) are more likely helpful for mobile web searchers, but we're not sure on if this really has Yahoo!'s oneSearch "jumping over" Google's mobile presence. In terms of usefulness, probably. In terms of sheer search volume, well... who knows.
Google gets psychic with mobile search patent
Google sometimes has the uncanny ability to know exactly what we're searching for and can cut through all the results muck sometimes. Not all the time, but nothing is perfect, right? Those Mountain View Mensas are ready to take that to the next level it appears, as Google has just applied for a patent filing that looks like possible precursor to a "Google Phone." If not a Google Phone, then at least a "Google GUI" for a phone. Heck, maybe this will show up in the iPhone upon release or as a software upgrade later. The Google patent appears to contain language and associated mobile processes (user input, of course) that can predict what a user is searching for or the words they are typing in a text message. According to the patent, Google's software takes into consideration the customer location, previous searches (search history) and even SMS history and the time of day when all this search info is requested by the customer. Before we belt out mobile AJAX in our minds, it's just a patent filing, so no dice yet on what this could mean for the future of Google's mobile efforts.[Via mad4mobilephones]