Google AdSense A service that lets webmasters display highly targeted contextual advertising on their websites. Earnings are paid in dollars or euros – they are sent to a bank account or can be paid out by check.
Google Adwords The other side of AdSense – this service is used to create ads. These are then displayed on websites and in search results.
Google Analytics An analytics service that tracks visits to your website and what visitors do there. The service is available in Czech.
Google Android A mobile operating system, similar to Windows Phone or iOS.
It can also be used on netbooks. It is now under the umbrella of the Open Handset Alliance, which Google founded and which today has 30 members from among mobile operators and phone manufacturers.
Google Answers A service launched in 2003. It let you ask a question and pay $2-$200, and someone answered the question for 75% of that amount. The remaining 25% went to Google. The answered question then remained freely available. The service was shut down in 2008.
Google Apps A suite of services on your own domain that includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Page Creator and Start Page, complemented by the Administrator Control Panel.
It comes in Standard and Education editions (both free); the paid edition is called Premier. Education and Premier offer an API for integrating additional services into existing infrastructure and round-the-clock assistance, including phone support. The Google Code Portal for developers provides information about the project’s APIs and publishes some projects under an open source license.
Google Desktop Search A desktop search tool, meaning it is a program just like Chrome or Picasa. A Czech version exists. Google Directory Lets you search the Open Directory Project – it does not search full text, but within categories.
Google Directory lets you search for websites by category.
In this project Google cooperates with the Open Directory Project catalog, which, much like Wikipedia, is administered by a community of volunteers from among internet users. Google Earth The program was originally called Earth Viewer and was acquired from Keyhole, Inc. in 2004. It lets you view the Earth as if from a satellite.
Google Groups Searching Usenet discussion groups and mailing lists. It was originally run by DejaNews, whose archive Google bought in 2001. It does not share a profile with your Google Account. Everything has to be filled in again, including your picture and so on.
Google Images Searching for images in Google’s database. It searches not only by the image file name, but also by the text that appears near the images.
In 2009 Google launched the Google Image Labeler application, which lets anyone interested annotate images in the form of an interactive game. Google Chrome A web browser; logically, it would have been pointless and rather nonsensical for Google not to release one. It is built on the freely available WebKit engine. The entire browser is released under an open source license. Google News A news aggregator. Stories are grouped by topic, and users can subscribe to specific keywords. Since November 2007 there has been a Czech version featuring Czech news sites at Zpravy.google.cz.
Google Product Search The service was originally called Froogle. It also cannot show what other people are buying and so on. It searches items offered for sale online. There is also a WLM version. Gmail It has its own contacts, which it does not share with any other application. It also has a task list. It offers high capacity (~7.3GB), although it started with 1GB. Most providers, which until then had offered mailboxes measured in MB, responded by increasing their capacity. Gmail faces criticism, for example because at the request of the Chinese government it will hand over the mailbox contents of any Chinese citizen.
Google Scholar Searches other people’s papers, in both PDF and HTML. It focuses on academic content. It can restrict results by author, publisher, publication date, predefined subject areas or part of the title of the document you are looking for. Google Web API A set of web services; each developer has a limit of 1,000 queries per day, otherwise the service is free. They support some popular services, such as Google Alerts. Orkut Yet another separate social network, offering services like Facebook, so linking it to the Google profile would make the most sense.
Picasa is software for managing, cataloging and basic editing of images, mainly digital photos. It lets you organize photos into albums and add tags. The new version has built-in support for Picasa Web Albums – a website for sharing photos online, similar to flickr.com, for example. You can make basic adjustments to brightness and color rendering, and a number of filters are available. A big advantage is that the edits are not applied to the original but only within the program – and despite this, Picasa offers above-average browsing speed. It is available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, and also for Linux as rpm and deb packages. Once again it has its own network, based on the principle of favorite users. SketchUp SketchUp is a handy tool for creating, viewing and modifying 3D models.
Google Wave Another separate network. When I loaded it, Chrome crashed on me – not enough RAM (1.3GB). The service was supposed to launch in 2009, but in 2010 it still carries the Labs label. It tries to unify email, instant messaging, wikis and social networking. Google Buzz Google’s own Twitter, integrated into Gmail. Compared to Twitter, it offers improved sharing of images and other multimedia.
Google Translator A translator between dozens of languages. Its quality has been improving considerably lately, moving well away from typical machine translation.
Google Video Searches videos, including previews and related videos. It searches youtube.com, Google Video, metacafe.com, dailymotion.com, and even sites like 4linux.com.br.
Google Reader A web-based RSS reader. For each post you can add a star (not shared), click “like” (shared), share it, share it with a note, send it by email, or add tags. When you subscribe to a feed, it recommends similar websites. Trends shows my statistics. The Browse for stuff feature lets me subscribe to multiple sources at once. You can import and export your subscription list.
Google Dictionary Translates individual words. It has no audio features.
Google Maps Google’s maps. You can display Photos, Wikipedia, Videos, Webcams and Real Estate on the map. The map can be shown in 3 modes:
- Normal
- Satellite
- Terrain
When printing a map, everything is shown – but it cannot be saved as an image. It sends a link to the image. The link cannot be copied from the address bar – you have to use the Link option. For a place you have found, you can add a review, and it shows the nearest stops – here in Opava it was only the train. You can plan a route through multiple points. Routing via the highway gets you there faster. It most likely calculates with the maximum speed limit, here 130 km/h. It also lists complete turn-by-turn directions, including references to buildings. You can write a comment for each map. You can search in:
- All
- Places
- Businesses
- Real estate
- Related
- User-created content
My Maps Each “My Map” has a description and a title. A map can be public or private, in which case it is shared only via a link sent by email. If Google Toolbar is installed, it can be opened directly in Google Earth. You can upload KML files and invite users by email to collaborate. (taken from maps.google.com) Blogger A blogging platform. You can use gadgets. Addresses take the form *.blogspot.com Google Alerts When something is found on the internet, Google notifies you by email.
Google AppEngine For web applications, which can be written in Java or Python. You can create a maximum of 10 applications. For each application it then offers detailed statistics. Google Checkout A service that facilitates the sale of goods. I could not even find the project’s search.
Google Latitude Shares your current location with the whole world.
Google Translator Toolkit A translation toolkit – it offers some advanced features as well as basic ones, such as the original text on the left side and the translation on the right.
iGoogle A personalized web page where you can place so-called Gadgets.
Google Mobile A set of pages optimized specifically for mobile phones. Picasa Web albums Albums on the Picasa website. Subscribed links “Creating your own search results”
Google Bookmarks An online bookmark manager Knol A new generation of online encyclopedia. Google Friend Connect Often found on websites, it shows the number of people who are fans of the site or read it regularly.
Google Talk A chat program. Messages are sent as emails.
Google Voice A system for calling and call forwarding, call routing, voicemail, voice messages and your own phone number
Google Web History If you have Google Toolbar, it records every page I visit; otherwise only Google’s pages.
Google Webmaster Tool Helps you check indexing progress and optimize visibility for search engines. It has utilities for working with a sitemap or robots.txt.
Google Docs A serious competitor to MS Office. It can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings. It saves automatically in real time. The program is designed first and foremost for online work. Multiple users can work on one file at the same time. A file can be starred or hidden. It now also works as storage for all kinds of files. YouTube The world’s best-known video sharing site. Acquired by Google in 2004. It is involved in a whole range of lawsuits. It can upload multiple videos at once. It has a whole range of handy features for uploaders.
Google Blogs Searches not only blogs, but also sites such as root.cz.
Google Calendar Lets you subscribe to Google’s calendars, and likewise to other people’s calendars, which you can even import. It offers day, week, month and 4 days views. You can use any number of calendars. Google Desktop Indexing and searching your computer, a sidebar and gadgets
Google Books Scans of some books, where copyright allows it.
Google Toolbar A toolbar for Firefox/IE. The primary focus is on search. It makes browsing the web more convenient – it highlights search terms and automatically opens mailto links in Gmail. It can replace the browser’s search box with the Google Toolbar. Not all features have to be active when the toolbar is hidden. It can automatically fill in data on a page using your profile. The main features that have additional settings are: WikiComments, Translate, Spell Check, Google Docs, Send To, Bookmarks, PageRank.
Google Pack Software that Google selected for our PCs. It contains the following programs:
- Google Earth
- Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
- Google Desktop
- Adobe Reader
- Google Talk
- RealPlayer
- Skype
- Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar
- Picasa
- Google Apps
- Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus
- Google Chrome Web Browser
Google Video Uploader Uploads videos, but I did not manage to log in. Mail Sync Synchronizes Outlook with a Google Apps account Google Video Player For playing videos that I download from video.google.com. They have the extensions .gvp and .gvi. Gmail notifier A simple little utility that checks whether there is new mail in Gmail.
Google Earth for iPhone What can I say… I do not have an iPhone, so I cannot squeeze out anything more here.
Google Mobile Maps Maps for Android and iOS. So, in summary, I thought Google would try to bring all users of all its services together into a single directory, but no – it turned out that these services have separate networks that do not interact with each other in any way. On top of that, you cannot even import from another Google site. You can build a network in these services: Gmail, Google Wave, Orkut, Buzz (Google Account)