Google Decides Fate Of More Than Half Of Labs Projects; Correlate Survives, Sets Doesn’t

Another week, another round of updates from the slow phase-out of Google Labs. This week, good news for fans of one keyword-related tool, but bad news for fans of another. Google Correlate Added To Google Trends Google Correlate has survived the chopping block. Previously available at correlate.googlelabs.com, it’s now been given a permanent home as […]

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Another week, another round of updates from the slow phase-out of Google Labs. This week, good news for fans of one keyword-related tool, but bad news for fans of another.

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Google Correlate Added To Google Trends

Google Correlate has survived the chopping block. Previously available at correlate.googlelabs.com, it’s now been given a permanent home as part of Google Trends and can be found at www.google.com/trends/correlate.

Correlate has been described as “Google Trends in reverse.” With Trends, you provide a search term and get back data related to the term. With Correlate, you provide the data first. Here’s how Vanessa Fox described it just a couple months ago in our article, Google Correlate: A New Way To Research Keyword Popularity & Trends:

With Google Correlate, you can upload data charted over either time or space and Google will look for matching patterns in search volumes. If you don’t have data of your own to upload, you can simply specify search terms, and Google will calculate the trending pattern and show matching patterns.

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Google Sets Shutting Down

Google Sets is another keyword-related tool, but it’s headed out to pasture. The latest update on Google Labs’ website says Sets will be shut down by September 5th. It was a simple tool that could identify and predict groups of related keywords from a small list (of up to five items). It was discussed in these previous articles here on Search Engine Land:

More Google Labs Decisions

Those are just two of several announcements added to the Google Labs website over the past few days. Only one other experiment is specifically listed as being phased out: Places Directory, an app that launched in 2009 but has been essentially replicated by many of the features that are now standard in Google Maps for mobile.

Several other Labs projects carry a new notation that says, Although Google Labs is winding down, (NAME OF PROJECT) is available as usual on Android Market. That list includes:

  • Google Shopper
  • Open Spot
  • Intersection Explorer
  • WalkyTalky
  • My Tracks for Android
  • Google Goggles
  • Sky Map for Android
  • Gesture Search
  • Finance for Android
  • Google Listen

It’s not clear if Google is saying those projects will remain available in the Android Market after Labs shuts down, and when asked, a Google spokesperson would only say, “We don’t have any future plans to announce at this time.”

Three other updates: Google says that Web Application Exploits and Defenses can be found at google-gruyere.appspot.com. Scripting Layer for Android can be found at code.google.com/p/android-scripting. And Google Earth Engine is being moved to www.google.org/earthengine.

With this latest round of announcements, Google has now decided the fate of 28 of the 53 existing projects in Google Labs. See the “related articles” below if you missed the previous updates. The company isn’t saying what the timeframe is for determining the future of the remaining projects. But they’ve decided on just over half in about five weeks, so that may suggest it’ll be another month or so before Google Labs formally closes its doors.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
Contributor
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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