Light bulbs that connect to the internet? Elevators that reach into space? Robots that show up for work in your place? These are a few of about 100 ideas that Google is reportedly toying with inside Google X, the name of a "top-secret lab" somewhere in the Bay Area. The New York Times wrote about it this weekend after speaking to a dozen people that are aware of the project. According to the Times, robots (and I don't mean the .txt file) play a big part in Google X: Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including [...]

Related Topics: Google: Cars | Google: Labs | Google: Other

Buzz was a great learning experience, says Google, but in a few weeks it will be shut down and all such efforts will be focused on Google Plus. The move will likely come as no surprise to Google-watchers, who noted that Buzz integration with Google+ was minimal. Additionally, the Google Labs page, as previously announced, will disappear after today. "We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google Plus," Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product at Google, wrote in a blog post. Buzz had a relatively short [...]

Related Topics: Google: Buzz | Google: Google+ | Google: Labs | Top News

Several more Google Labs projects have learned their fate as the company continues to close down Google Labs as part of a larger streamlining effort. Here's a look at the latest group of decisions. Google Labs Survivors Page Speed Online - A tool that launched earlier this year, Page Speed analyzes a given URL, gives it a score and offers a list of ways to make the page load faster. The URL for this tool still works via the GoogleLabs.com domain, but Google says Page Speed "will be hosted with our other developer tools." There's no indication exactly where, but Webmaster Tools seems t [...]

Related Topics: Google: Labs

Google has just announced the closure of several well-known products, including Fast Flip, Sidewiki, Aardvark and Subscribed Links. Some of these are part of the ongoing purge of Google Labs products, while others that are being shut down were not part of Labs. And Google has also announced that other Google Labs projects have "graduated" out of labs and survived the chopping block. Confused? Here's a recap of what's coming and what's going. Google Fast Flip Fast Flip launched in 2009 and offered a more visual, print-like way to view news on the web. The story goes that Google's [...]

Related Topics: Google: Labs | Google: News | Google: Sidewiki | Top News

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 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 provi [...]

Related Topics: Google: Correlate | Google: Labs | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | Top News