Your Maven

Who have thought that a thesis of two College Students will be the next big thing? In 1998, Google had a humble start as a search engine, but now it leads all search engines. It also has expanded the meaning of web search and organized the world of online research. To give online users better search results, Google put up search pages focused on particular areas like Google Maps, Google Images, Google News, Google Videos, and Google Scholar,.

1. Google Map To Get Directions – For those who are looking for a restaurant, a park, a church, a school, or a mall, there is nothing else they should need but the very valuable map online application from Google. This application allows them to locate the places they are looking for quickly. Just type in an address, or an intersection, or keywords related to the place they are looking for. Since there is a zooming feature on this Map, online users will get a greater idea on the place they are looking for. They can also get driving directions from Google Maps.

With Google Maps, online users also have the chance to take a peek of the world in front of their computers. They can go to Google Maps UK and Google Maps Canada, just to see how UK’s streets and Canada’s cities look like from up above.

2. Google Image Search – When an online user is looking for images all he has to do is go to Google Image Search. This is a comprehensive image search service from Google. Google allow users to narrow down their query by restricting image results according to certain criteria like an image size: large, medium, or small. There are more criteria available to narrow down search results in Google advanced image search options.

Also, since a lot of internet surfers are using Google Image Search, some of them wonder if they can add photos to Google Image Search. Actually, they can’t directly upload to Google, but they could upload it on other websites and hopefully Google will index it.

3. Google Video – If online users are looking for videos, they usually go to youtube, but since Google has acquired Youtube, Google Video search now could offer comprehensive search results. It can now include videos from YouTube, and other hosting services. Uploading video clips and sharing these videos to other online users are now easy to do. Uploaded videos, however, may be viewed free or with charge like television programs and independent films. Downloading, saving, or embedding the Google videos in other web sites will depend on the on the one who uploaded the video; If the uploader gave these options.

Together with Google Video, Google Video Player was also offered by Google for free download but it is no longer available since August this year, according to an article in Wikipedia. Google Video Player could only display Flash Videos files.

4. Google Scholar for Research –For students writing thesis, or writers searching for trustworthy sources, or to any users searching for any scholarly literature on the web, the Google Scholar is the online service they should use. Search results from Google Scholar can include papers, abstracts, and citations. Unlike other Google services, Google Scholar examines thoroughly these scholarly literature like any other researcher would usually do. Google claimed that they weigh “the content, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature.”

5. Google News –An automated news aggregator, conducted similarly with the idea of Page Ranking. Google News already had faced different controversies since its beta stage in 2002. It was only in January 2006 that Google News became an official part of Google’s services.

For online users who are specifically looking for news articles, they should look it up in Google News since they can sort the search results according to the news’ date of publication, news source, and news location. News Search results became more extensive in June 2006, when Google added the News Archive Search Feature, wherein the user can get news results even 200 years way back, and may even show them a timeline. The user can sort it too by language, and price.