What?s coming up in the world of IT: Google?s Search / Spreadsheet Hybrid

The latest wacky invention to come out of Google’s research and development labs is called Google Squares, a cross between a normal web search and a spreadsheet. The tool is designed to organise data found through normal web searches in to the rows and columns familiar to users of a spreadsheet. While that may sound like a nifty but useless trick, the software behind it is actually quite clever. For example, if you searched for a list of types of lizard for example, Google Squared could search the web for types of lizards, their typical sizes, the locations where they can be found, plus pictures of each different type, and then present all of the data to you in a neatly formatted spreadsheet. If you think this sounds familiar, it could be that Google are taking seriously the new Wolfram Alpha search engine that we reported on a couple of weeks ago, which mines through its own databases to provide a similar kind of service. At the time of writing, Google Squared is not available to the public. However, Wolfram Alpha has just launched, and you can try it here:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/