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 Mr. Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh.

Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.

Though many of the projects are secret, the Times article mentions a couple that we’ve written about before. Those automated, driverless cars are being developed in Google X; the Times says Google is thinking about manufacturing them and using them to show ads to passengers inside.

A Google spokeswoman emphasized to the Times that Google’s financial investments in these projects “are very small by comparison” to the company’s investment in its core products.

Although most of the projects are highly conceptual, the Times found two sources who said at least one of the ideas would be released by the end of this year.

(In case the small print on the image above is too small, that’s not a real/official Google X logo. It’s an image of our own making.)

“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 lifespan marked mostly by controversy and criticism. The product first drew ire at launch, when it automatically had people follow others based on their most frequent email and chat contacts — Google failed to realize that users might not want their frequent correspondents’ identity made public. Later, that debacle led to an investigation and eventual settlement with the Federal Trade Commission under which Google agreed to undergo third-party privacy audits for the next 20 years.

Google said it would shut down Buzz in the next few weeks and reminded users they could extract their information via Google Takeout.

Labs, on the other hand, had been a fixture at Google for years. It’s well known as the place where many Google products were born. The Labs shutdown was a result of new CEO Larry Page’s efforts to streamline Google’s product portfolio and benefit from increased focus. Current projects in Labs are now listed with their status — but check soon because the page will disappear later today. Some projects were to be shut down and others incorporated into different areas of focus. Product-specific labs, such as Gmail Labs or Calendar Labs, will continue.

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 to be a safe assumption.

Public Data Explorer – This tool launched in 2008 and lets users search and compare sets of public data, such as comparing unemployment rates across different states. This has now graduated out of Google Labs. Also, the related Dataset upload for Public Data Explorer tool is also graduating from Google Labs.

Two other tools that have graduated are Picasa for Mac and the Google Checkout Store Gadget.

Google Labs Non-Survivors

Google Body browser isn’t quite “dying,” but it will no longer be part of Google. Instead, Google says it will open-source the code and is also working with its partner, Zygote Media Group, on a similar application called Zygote Body. You can get more info about this on the Google Labs website.

Tashkeel – Google says that this tool for working with Arabic text will be shut down by September 30 — one week from today. There are already several user comments asking Google to reconsider the decision.

For more on other Google Labs experiments that have been shut down, or destined for shut down — as well ones that will survive — see some of the related story links below.

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 Larry Page wondered out loud why the web isn’t like a magazine — he wanted a way to browse it. Thus, Fast Flip was born.

In a letter to participating publishers, Google says Fast Flip will be removed from Google News and Labs “in the next few days.” Publishers will be contacted within the next month with confirmation of their final advertising revenue payment.

Google Sidewiki

Another 2009 launch, Sidewiki let web surfers comment on pages that they’d visited. It required users to install the Google Toolbar and turn on “enhanced” features. Comments would pop-out from the side in a separate panel.

Sidewiki is shutting down, and Google says users will “have a number of months” to download their comments/content.

Aardvark

Google acquired Aardvark in early 2010. It’s a social search service that was created, ironically, by former Google employees. Users could ask Aardvark a question, and the service would search for the right person in your network to provide the answer. It was named one of TIME’s best websites of 2009.

According to a post today on Aardvark’s blog, the service will be shutting down at the end of the September. The blog post also includes instructions for Aardvark users who want to retrieve their past data before the shut down.

Subscribed Links

Started all the way back in 2006, Subscribed Links let webmasters create custom links that users could add to Google’s search results. It was adopted pretty quickly by some prominent sites, but never grew into anything more than a niche product. With the growth of Google Sitelinks — which are now showing as many as 12 per site — Subscribed Links seems like overkill to a degree. Google obviously thinks so. Susbcribed Links will shut down on September 15th.

Survivors From Google Labs

Some Google Labs projects have survived the chopping block and Google has now listed them as “graduated” on the Google Labs website:

• Fetch as Googlebot is graduating from Labs to its permanent home in Google Webmaster Tools.
• Flu Trends will remain available at www.google.org/flutrends.
• Google Reader Play will remain available at www.google.com/reader/play.
• Julia Map will be released as an open source project soon and remain available at julia-map.appspot.com.
• Google Swiffy has graduated from Labs and soon move to a new domain.
• Indic Music Search will remain available at www.google.co.in/music.
• Google Moderator will remain available at www.google.com/moderator.
• Google Transliteration will remain available at www.google.com/transliterate.

Other Product Updates

Google’s blog post offers details on the future of a number of other Google products.

• Google Image Labeler, a game in which users helped Google understand images by tagging them with keywords, is shutting down. No date is given.
• Google Desktop is shutting down as of September 14th.
• Google Maps API for Flash is being deprecated, but Google will continue to support Premier customers.
• Google Pack is being shut down today.
• Google Web Security – the sales channel is being discontinued, but existing customers will be supported.
• Google Notebook will be shut down “in the coming months.”

Personal aside: Having now written a handful of articles over the past month about the various projects that Google is shutting down, I can’t help but think how many times those of us inside the search industry thought some of these would “change the game” in some way. Sidewiki and Subscribed Links both saw a lot of hype when they were launched as having a potentially huge impact on SEO. Fast Flip and News Timeline were mentioned as possibly having a big impact on online publishing. But our perception and the reality of public adoption (or lack thereof) is often not the same. That’s worth keeping in mind as Google — and other companies — rolls out new products and experiments in the future.

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.

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:

• Google Sets & Squared: Powerful Keyword Research Tools by Tony Soric
• 7 Incredibly Valuable But Underused Free Tools For PPC Marketers by Brad Geddes
• The Giant List Of Keyword Tools by Josh Dreller

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.

Those are two of the most recent experiments that Google has listed for shutdown on the Google Labs home page.

Google Squared

Google Squared launched in 2009 and offered search results in tables, with data presented across rows and down columns. That, at least, was the typical visible form of what Google Squared does/did. But the underlying technology also enabled Google to offer things like related searches and answers to questions, like this:

And in its announcement that Google Squared is shutting down on September 5th, Google says the technology will continue to be used in search results like that.

As part of the phasing out of Google Labs, Google Squared will be shut down on September 5, 2011. Any saved Squares will be deleted. If you would like to keep Squares, you may export them to CSV files or Google Spreadsheets using the Export function on the upper-right hand side of the Squared screen. We will continue to use Google Squared technology to improve search, as we have already done with question answering and related searches.

Google News Timeline

Google announced (and already removed) News Timeline a week ago — on August 17th. This appears to have happened as part of the removal of the Google News Archive search page.

As the name implies, News Timeline presented news search results in a visual timeline format. Here’s what it looked like when it launched in 2009:

Two other smaller projects are on the chopping block:

• City Tours: Google says this will shut down by September 6th. Another 2009 project, this was a tourism-related experiment that, given a city, would suggest sites to see and also map out a detailed itinerary and minute-by-minute travel schedule. You can see a screenshot on our article about City Tours’ launch.
• Realtime Mytracks: No date is given for the shutdown of this unusual tool that allowed users to follow Team HTC – Columbia during a previous Tour de France.

Google previously announced the impending shut down of several other labs projects, including App Inventor for Android and Talk Guru.

We now know a little more about which ones will live and which won’t.

Over the past several days, Google has been updating GoogleLabs.com with the status and decisions on several current labs projects. Here are the decisions that have been made since the larger July 20th announcement:

Google Labs Survivors

• Google Books Ngram Viewer: Google just announced today that this product will be incorporated into Google Books. For background, see our article When OCR Goes Bad: Google’s Ngram Viewer & The F-Word.
• Google Scribe: Also announced today, this word processing tool is now part of Blogger in Draft.

Google Labs Deadpool

• Image Swirl: This image search tool “will be winding down,” Google says. No date is given for its demise. We wrote about the experiment back in November 2009: Google Image Swirl: A New Way To Browse For Similar Images.
• Sputnik: No date given for the end of this Javascript testing tool.
• Google Talk Guru: Google says this tool, which added a search element to Google Talk, will shut down by the end of September 2011. For background, see our article Google Talk Guru Brings Search To Instant Messaging.
• App Inventor for Android: A tool that enabled non-programmers to build Android apps. Google says the product will be discontinued, but the source code will be open sourced. For further details, see GoogleLabs.com’s App Inventor page.
• Breadcrumb: Google says this mobile app developer tool will be shut down by September 2, 2011.
• Script Converter: This transliteration tool will be shut down on August 16, 2011.

There are currently 54 products listed in Google Labs, so the company obviously has a lot more decisions to make.

In its announcement, Google says the decision to shut down Google Labs is part of its new focus on product efforts:

While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.

The announcement is extremely light on specifics — no date is given for the shutdown, and little is revealed about what will happen to specific projects that are currently in Google Labs.

In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments — in others we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market.

Several well-known Google products are still in Labs, such as Google Correlate and Google Squared. Others have graduated from Labs to be important parts of the Google search experience — personalized search comes to mind as one example. Google News “fast flip” was also a Labs experiment.

A Google spokesperson was unable to share any news on specific Labs projects, but told us via email that specific product labs won’t be affected by the shutdown:

There won’t be any immediate changes to in-product experimental channels like Gmail Labs or Maps Labs. We’ll continue to experiment with new features in each of our products, even as we move to retire the Labs name.

In his recent statements during Google’s earnings call, Page talked about the company’s focus on streamlining product offerings:

Greater focus has also been another big feature for me this quarter–more wood behind fewer arrows

Last month, for example, we announced that we will be closing Google Health and Google PowerMeter

We’ve also done substantial internal work simplifying and streamlining our product lines

While much of that work has not yet become visible externally, I am very happy with our progress here

Focus and prioritization are crucial given our amazing opportunities

Google’s announcement invites users to keep an eye on GoogleLabs.com for future updates about today’s news.

Google has also done some cool things with search data, including forecasting Flu Trends and predicting the impact of the Gulf oil spill on tourism in Florida. Now, they’ve created a tool to enable you to correlate search trends with any data you might want to throw into the mix. How awesome is that? (Hint: very awesome.)

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.

As Google notes in their documentation, this is sort of the opposite of Google Trends:

Google Correlate is like Google Trends in reverse. With Google Trends, you type in a query and get back a data series of activity (over time or in each US state). With Google Correlate, you enter a data series (the target) and get back a list of queries whose data series follows a similar pattern.

It appears that right now, you can either upload time-based data or state-based data (but not international data). You can even just draw a line on a graph and see what correlates!

I have apparently drawn the line that most correlates to people searching for Homelife Communities (an Atlanta builder):

The comic Google created to explain the new tool is careful to point out (multiple times!) that correlation does not necessarily equal causation.  The states where Glee is performing in concert and searches for [the dreamiest] may have the same spikes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the two are related.

They might be though. At O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference last month, I did an Ignite talk showing that people were interested in Rebecca Black everywhere, but were only really interested in March Madness in states that had teams participating.

Interest in Rebecca Black:

Interest in March Madness (states with participating teams and state-based search interest):

I feel like there could be some really interesting integrations between this and Google’s Public Data Explorer, but Google Correlate is in labs, so give it some time.

If you want to check it out for yourself, Google has a tutorial, FAQ, and whitepaper.

The tool analyzes any URL, gives it a grade (on a score of 0-100) and then offers a potentially long list of ways to make the page faster. The suggestions are divided into High, Medium and Low priority. The test, appropriately, runs in a matter of seconds.

Search Engine Land has scored an 85 and 84 in the two tests I ran within a couple minutes of each other. Here’s a look at the suggestions provided to us:

That’s an analysis of desktop page speed; you can select to also run a mobile speed report.

There are also page speed extensions for Firefox and Chrome, as well as other code/instructions for developers on that page.

It was just about a year ago that Google announced it was using speed as a ranking factor in its search results.