There seems to be no bounds to the new or enhanced tools that continue to flow from the virtual production line at the Googleplex, the corporate headquarters of Google Inc., Mountain View, California.
With a near monopoly on the UK search market, it’s worth asking what’s actually new and how much value does this functionality provide?
Well, much depends on what we end-users want from Google. It may be for basic search, advanced search (such as images, video, etc.) or for more complex activities such as website optimization procedures and on-line marketing campaigns.
First off, it’s fair to say that some of the many initiatives that seem to appear at an astonishing rate aren’t really new at all but are improvements while others are still at an advanced planning stage.
Here are just a small sample of the more recent tools and widgets that have either been released by Google or are still in the pipeline:
Name: Google Wave
Current status: Limited preview
Description: “Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using rich format text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
Name: Google Campaign Insights
Current status: Launched. (Larger display ad campaigns across Google Content Network in the US and UK).
Description: “Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.”
Name: Promoted videos now in AdWords
Current status: Launched
Description: “You can now advertise your business with Promoted Videos directly through AdWords. Promoted Videos allow you to drive viewership of your videos by targeting searches that happen on YouTube every day. You can also use Promoted Videos to have your videos appear on the YouTube homepage and across the AdSense network.”
Name: Parameter handling (Webmaster Tool)
Current status: Launched
Description: “A feature to assist webmasters with managing duplicate content, parameter handling allows you to view which parameters Google believes should be ignored or not ignored at crawl time.”
Name: Google Friend Connect
Current status: Launched
Description: “An enhancement that removes the need to upload files to activate your website. Setting up a new website now just involves entering your site’s name and URL.”
Other new social gadgets from Google include Scrabble, a to-do list and more.
These are just a few examples of the breadth and depth of Google’s continued innovation in specific areas of the on-line space. But do the toolsets represent better insight and a greater on-line experience or is much of it just cyber-clutter and more stuff to deal with?
Let us know what you think.
With regards to services, I guess the... on You get what you pay for
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