Have You Googled Google?

Now, Google offers a similar—and growing—range of freebies for bigger, networked computers so that its search power does not end up as a one-trick pony.

Google thrives on two things: An ever-growing hunger for computer memories on the one hand, and ex-ploding content—text, sound, videos, the works—on the other. Google’s e-mail account (mail.google.com) is the most popular of its freebies, and thrives on its free memory which gets biggerbythesecond,ticking away on your screen. It started with two gi-gabytes, andis nowat2.7GB.Whilethis encouragesyounottodelete anystuff, youwill resort toGoogle’s engine each timeyousearch.

GoogleTalk, the instant messenger, offers free voice calls, but the cooler stuff in this is that the messenger shows up on the side of your e-mail page inside your browser, with a green light glowing to show who among your friends are online. You can in-stantly chat up friends in Toronto, Kuala Lumpur or Santiago while con-tinuing to read and write mail, without opening another piece of software. What’s more, you can save all your impulsive chats (mind your language and beware of the consequences, though!).

Gmail comes in 38 languages, in-cluding Hindi, and automatically saves your mail and scans messages for viruses. You can highlight portions of your mail as well. The toolbar and sidebar are desktop accessories. You don’t have to visit Google’s search page anymore, if you down-load and install a search toolbar at-tached to your browser. It also helps you block unwanted pop-up ads, checks spellings and even translates web pages into various languages.

The sidebar, which is a part of Google’s desktop search engine, also has cool add-ons: You can read your e-mail on the desktop reader, and scribble quick notes on a built-in scratch pad. A visit to pack.google.com will unveil several more downloads, including Pi-casa, which helps you find, edit and share photos. Other free stuff includes Sketchup, a gee-whiz software that lets you convert two-dimensional pic-tures to 3D by pushing and pulling the visuals. Google acquired Sketchup in March, and launched it in late April.

Beyond the free downloads, Google has done other revolutionary things that offer the lay surfer a lot of fun. It acquired Blogger (blogger.com), a site that helps you maintain diaries, called web logs, or blogs, free. The site offers various designs and look-and-feel features that make each blog po-tentially a publication in its own right.

And if you still haven’t checked out Google News, you are missing some-thing. India’s own Krishna Bharat, principal scientist at Google, made headlines worldwide when he devel-oped an automated site that indexes websites of well-known sources of news. The site (news.google.com) has invited controversy involving news providers because it gives to a search results page the appearance of a regu-lar news portal, complete with pic-tures and design. You can personalise news feeds from 4,500 sources based on the site to suit your tastes.

With broadband video becoming more popular, Google’s dedicated site (video.google.com) may emerge as a convergence point for uploading of videos—for free. You can buy popular programmes, or sell your own stuff, or simply share your creations with friends, a bit like running your own television station.

But the big threat to Bill Gates is still in the making. Google recently ac-quired Upstartle, which has developed a web-based word processor called Writely (writely.com). Writely helps people write, edit and share doc-uments online. What it potentially means is that conventional paid-for software like MS Word is now available free. No wonder, Microsoft announced late in April that it would spend $2 bil-lion more on research this year— something industry watchers link to its rivalry with Google. For computer-users, the cyber war is a great news that brings more goodies.

THE GOOGLE GOODIES

PAGE CREATOR

pages.google.com: Free online software which you can use to create and publish attractive web pages in just minutes, without web designers or difficult tools.

DESKTOP ENGINE

desktop.google.com: A download that helps you plumb your own computer to ferret out stuff, or search the whole web. Will be more useful as files get older, bigger and numerous.

SPECIALISED SEARCH

Refine your search to look for stuff only from academic papers, articles, theses and abstracts at scholar.google.com or books (books.google.com) or exploding blogs (blogsearch.google.com). There is also a specialised search facility to hunt within the websites of American universities.

EARTH WATCH

earth.google.com: This download gives you a satellite camera view of world spots, making you feel like a high-flying spy. The Indian army did not quite like it. Sightseeing options are also available.

PICASA

Software to share and organise photos with captions.

CALENDAR

calendar.google.com: Helps you set up events on a calendar which you can share with others. SMS reminders are also possible.

TRANSLATOR

Part of the toolbar, this Google feature translates web pages into various languages. Awesome potential.

3-D SOFTWARE

sketchup.google.com: Free tool that helps you manipulate two dimensional pictures and turn them into three-dimensional ones.

BLOGGER

blogger.com: This site offers free blog sites with cool looks. Po-tentially makes every online diarist an aesthetically savvy publisher.

WRITELY

writely.com: Word processor that helps people write and edit documents. Registrations suspended due to overwhelming demand.