Google Labs adds new toys: “Similar Images” and “Google News Timeline”

by Michael J. Evans on April 21, 2009

in Google,Online News and Blogs

The Official Google blog today reports two new services you may want to try. One is the “Similar Images” search which allows you to find images that are, well, similar to another image.  Another toy that may prove more useful to some of us is the “Google News Timeline.”  According to Google’s blog, “Google News Timeline organizes information chronologically by presenting results from Google News and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline. You can navigate through time by dragging the timeline, setting the time scale to days, weeks, months, years, or decades, or just including a time period in your query (i.e., “1977″). To see this in action, check out the results viewed by month in the summer of 2006.”

As someone who has created a number of websites dealing with recalled products, I’ve found that most clients appreciated a timeline explaining the history of the product, from the time it was introduced until the time it was recalled.  To the extent that Google News Timeline can help with that, it could be very useful to people building sites devoted to particular defective products.  I tested it with a search for “Yamaha Rhino.”  I currently represent clients injured on Rhinos, and operate a Yamaha Rhino recall site and an ATV and Yamaha Rhino lawsuit site.)  Unfortunately, Google News Timeline was not as helpful as I hoped.  It failed to turn up several relevant news articles.  For example, it failed to list a single article from January 1, 2009 through March 31, 2009, although there were very relevant news articles about Yamaha Rhinos, including the establishment of an MDL and consolidation of all federal lawsuits involving Yamaha Rhinos.

I’m going to put Google News Timeline down as an item to check back on in a month or two.  It’s too early to tell how helpful it may be.

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