Google Talk Guru Brings Search To Instant Messaging

By Matt McGee

Published: March 30, 2011 at 12:38 am

Google Talk Guru is a new experiment that tries to turn the instant messaging interface into a search engine of sorts. It was just added to Google Labs today, and is very much a lab-level project.

google-talk-guru

There are a very limited number of search commands that currently work in Google Talk Guru. As you can see from the screenshot above, searches for international times aren’t supported (#1 and #2 above), but weather search (#3) and even a simple web search (#4) are. The web search is kinda like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google.com — it returns only the first result for your search query and an option to see the second result by replying with “next.”

It’s somewhat reminiscent of Aardvark, the Q&A service that Google bought in February 2010, which offers a sort-of “social search” via instant message (and other platforms).

Google Talk Guru currently supports seven search commands.

(via Google Operating System)

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About the author

Matt McGee

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.