Webware

After more than five years as a publicly available test version, Gmail shed its beta label in July. Now one feature key to the Net giant's cloud computing aspirations, offline access to Gmail, also has grown up less than a year after its debut.

"Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail," Google programmer Aaron Whyte announced the change Monday in a blog post.

Offline Gmail support, which relies on a Google browser plug-in called Gears, lets people read, search, organize, and compose e-mail even when there's no Net connection; sent messages are queued up in an outbox for delivery when the network access is restored and the account on the computer can resynchronize with the server.

"Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients--they're used to being able to access their mail whether or not they're online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser," Whyte said.

Google Apps, a bundle that includes Gmail, Google Calendar, and the Google Docs suite of online applications, is available for free for educational users or smaller organizations. Premiere accounts cost $50 per person per year, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called such enterprise-oriented services Google's "next big billion-dollar opportunity."

Gears is built into Google's Chrome browser, but other browsers rely on a plug-in. However, Google has stopped developing Gears in favor HTML5's equivalent features. That overhaul of the standard for displaying Web page includes local data storage on a computer as one feature, and it's now enabled by default in Chrome even though HTML5 isn't a final standard yet.

Image identification company PicScout is expanding its efforts to help people identify the rights holders of images they find online.

On Tuesday the company is set to add microstock site Dreamstime's more than 7 million images to its Image Exchange catalog. What this means is that users who have the company's Image Exchange Firefox add-on installed will be able to identify when one of those images (or the other 40 million or so that are in the catalog) winds up on Web sites and in places like Google's image search.

PicScout cross-references images on the Web with its Image Exchange library to find matches of photos and stock imagery that is in its catalog.

(Credit: CNET)

The add-on, which was introduced in October and remains in private beta, displays a little blue "i" on top of images that are within PicScout's image catalog, and that can be linked back to the rights holder or stock image site. This includes images from Flickr, as long as they've been marked by their uploader with a Creative Commons, attribution-only and noncommercial license.

Either way the end user will see whose image it is without having to do the legwork. PicScout goes one step further to link people directly to where they can then buy it, or get in contact with the image owner to secure the rights to reuse it.

The company says it plans to expand to Internet Explorer next, but chose Firefox first since it offered cross-compatibility with both PC and Mac users. The two platforms will offer identical functionality since they'll be working off the same master index.

Along with the addition of Dreamstime, PicScout is also announcing that it has picked up Joichi Ito as one of its advisers. Among some of his other gigs, Ito sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation, is the founder and CEO of venture capital firm Neoteny, and is also the CEO of Creative Commons.

Previously: PicApp offers ad-sponsored stock photos (Note: this company has since been spun out by PicScout.)

For a while, some believed that the Web and social networks would limit the amount of time people spend consuming video content. But Nielsen's latest A2/M2 Three Screen Report has found that people are actually consuming content on more platforms, thanks to digital video recorders and the Web.

According to the report, which looks at content viewing on television, the Web, and several other platforms, online-video viewing was up a whopping 34.9 percent in the third quarter. DVR use was up 21.1 percent, the study found. Surprisingly, 99 percent of video content that's watched in the U.S. is done on a television. So, while Web use is on the rise, it still has a long way to go before the television is supplanted as the "go-to" for consuming video content.

Nielsen shows off video viewing by demographic.

(Credit: Nielsen)

Nielsen also looked at how much time the average American spends consuming video content on their TVs, from the Web, or via mobile devices. The company found that the average person watched 31 hours of television per week during the third quarter of 2009. Just 31 of those minutes were spent in playback mode on their DVRs.

Web use, while higher than it has been, was still much lower than television use. Nielsen said that the average consumer spent four hours on the Internet during the third quarter. That user watched an average of 22 minutes of online video per week. Meanwhile, mobile-video consumption was lagging far behind in the third quarter, accounting for just 3 minutes per week of the user's time. Unsurprising to some, teens watched the most video content on their mobile phones, averaging seven hours of mobile-video consumption per month.

A few other interesting tidbits of information: TV viewing followed closely with age. Those aged 65 and older watched an average of 43 hours of television each week, while the average person between the ages of 18 and 24 watched 22 hours of television each week. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 watched the most video content online, averaging 35 minutes per week.

Click here to see the full Nielsen study.

On Monday, the media-viewing app Boxee is going into a closed, private beta test. This app has been in private alpha testing for about a year and a half, and has won praise while generating some frustration among its test users. At first, for example, it was a great interface to the Hulu service, but Hulu made its content unavailable to Boxee users (there's a less-elegant workaround baked into the current product). AppleTV users who hacked the app into their system have also hit speed bumps--the app won't work on the newest updates of the AppleTV product.

Boxee soldiers on, gaining fans and adding content from other sources. I recently covered the Boxee version of Clicker, for example, which shows us how the Boxee platform might some day do a credible job of replacing users' TiVos or cable boxes.

The Boxee experience is improving, too. Monday's new beta has a completely redone interface that is far superior to the alpha's. The idea of the slide-out toolbar menus, an anachronistic throwback to Windows and Mac desktop operating systems, is thankfully gone, replaced by a more visible and consistent interface.

The app also gets new features. If you tell Boxee your Facebook and Twitter IDs, it will scan your friends' posts continuously, and tell you what they're talking about in a new "recommended" column on the Boxee home screen.

The home screen also shows your queue, which can include content that pops up based on shows you're subscribed to. It also has a "featured" column that Boxee can use to promote new content, included paid placements--a new revenue stream for the company.

Boxee can also now search the entire Netflix online inventory. Previously, you could view your online Netflix shows and see a smattering of new ones. Now you can see and stream everything, assuming you're a paying user.

There are also new content partners: The Escapist (which makes the Zero Punctuation video), and SuicideGirls. (I wasn't aware until I got the beta demo that Boxee supports adult content; the NSFW feeds don't appear until you disable the parental controls.)

The new Boxee begins to address my biggest gripe about the system, which is that it can be hard to find content from the multitudinous streams that feed into the platform. A new TV menu combines content from the user's hard drive as well as subscription and streaming sources, and it has a useful search feature. There's also an improved table of contents for shows. But Boxee still doesn't have a global search to find everything it can play, so in some cases you need to know which "application" (Boxee content stream) has a show you want to watch. Boxee VP Andrew Kippen did tell me it's an ongoing goal to improve the search process on the platform.

Kippen says the company recommends the Mac Mini as the best platform for the app at the moment. There are also OS X and Linux versions, and a Windows port, but it's for 32-bit installations only. The Linux port will be used in the dedicated Boxee hardware, details of which are being announced shortly. In the meantime, Roku has a somewhat competitive hardware-based product now shipping, and it has the additional benefit of offering access to a user's Amazon streaming-video account, which Boxee doesn't do.

Boxee is still closed to most new users. Everyone, even existing alpha users, has to sign up for the beta lottery to try it out. The beta will open to all around the Consumer Electronics Show time frame, in January.

New Boxee home screen

(Credit: Boxee)

The new show browser searches both locally stored and streamed content.

(Credit: Boxee)

A new control menu can pop up above any playing video.

(Credit: Boxee)

Chandra Rathakrishnan and his baby, the JooJoo.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)

CNET snagged the first journalists' demo of the new JooJoo (formerly CrunchPad) Web slate on Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan's San Francisco media tour. Quick impressions: yeah, this is a really cool device. Everyone reading a tech site like CNET will want one. But will they pay the $499 going price for it? We don't think so.

The JooJoo Web slate is based around a 12.1-inch diagonal 720p capacitive touch screen. The specs include: 1366x768-pixel resolution, a built-in camera, mic, and speakers, one USB port, and a card slot. There's 4GB of cache memory. What's the processor? Rathakrishnan wouldn't say. He also won't say who makes the touch screen.

The hardware is slim and pleasing to hold. The screen is gorgeous, and huge, and the plastic back is gently curved. The unit is very slim, thinner than a MacBook Air. There are no buttons on the device, save the single power switch.

The JooJoo runs a proprietary Linux-based operating system whose only purpose is to run the device's browser, based on Webkit but again a custom job by the developer. The browser supports Flash and other standard HTML extensions, but it won't run non-Web apps. No Skype for you.

JooJoo first look (photos)

Also missing: a user-accessible file system and printer drivers. This is one focused device. It browses the Web. That's it.

But it looks like it will do that job quite well. While the demo we saw was running on unfinished code, we found the device a very attractive integrated experience. The hardware is sleek and simple, and a pleasure to hold, and the user interface on the browser is simple and clear, although we expect it will get a bit more cluttered as necessary functions are added in before ship.

Upon booting the device, which really does take only nine seconds, you get a big display of tiles: Your Web bookmarks. The WiFi-only device loads up pages reasonably quickly and you can scroll through pages by dragging your finger on the screen. A pinch out (or "zoom") gesture takes you back the home screen. From the home screen, pinching in shows you your open Web sites. Missing from the current pre-production code is a navigate back gesture (it will be a two-finger swipe), a bookmark gesture (which will be like turning down a page corner), and other functions, like closing a browser window and page zoom.

From the home screen you can use the on-screen keyboard to enter a Web address or a search term. Once you type something in, you can use it as a Web address or a Google text or video search term.

The JooJoo works best when held in your hands like a book, I think, although the on-screen keyboard ends up positioned poorly. You can easily hold the device with one hand, but then you can only tap out words with one finger. There will be an optional easel stand, and the JooJoo will support USB and Bluetooth keyboards.

The JooJoo is designed in part as a video viewing device, but unfortunately in the demo we got, the Wi-Fi network we were on wasn't robust enough to support the video Rathakrishnan wanted to display. The few seconds of video we saw before the system stopped to buffer looked great, but if users buy this device expecting to be able to watch HD video in their hotel rooms all the time, we recommend that they either reset their expectations or avoid hotels like San Francisco's St. Regis, which apparently doesn't give its guests sufficient bandwidth.

Rathakrishnan says he's done no market research to verify that there's consumer support for this product, although he does note that people in TechCrunch audience have been supportive of the product. Of course, that was back when Michael Arrington was throwing around the concept at a $200 or $300 price point. At $500 it's a very different market, and the cabal of TechCrunch fans is not representative of consumer demand.

Rathakrishnan did say he's talking to several potential partners about the device--media companies, for the most part. A subsidized model is a possibility, he said.

The JooJoo with its pint-size inspiration, the iPhone.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)

The product will be hitting reviewers' hands this month, we're told, and will be shipping in eight to ten weeks.

Is the JooJoo a great device? Yes, it is. But at the $499 price point, we don't think it will be a success. It does less than a Netbook--it won't run productivity apps that aren't browser-based--and it's helpless when away from a Wi-Fi connection. It's a great computer for browsing the Web from the couch, but at its current price it's a luxury item, an indulgence. It's hard to justify its purchase in the way buyers can rationalize an iPhone or a Kindle. It's not a product we'd recommend to anyone who needs their computers for productivity. It's not a device for students, or workers, nor is it a good family room computer (the keyboard isn't good enough). You can get a capable laptop for $500 that does much more than the JooJoo.

If you have money to burn, though, go for it. It's pleasing to use and will be a great toy for your living room. At least until Apple figures out how to tackle this category.

Like so many other tech gadgets out there, in other words, many people will really want a JooJoo. But I doubt they will pay for it.

Previously: CrunchPad reborn as JooJoo.

Before too long, expect to find anything that anyone puts on the Internet on Google within seconds: with luck, it might even be useful.

Real-time search has come to Google. The company has been hinting at this day for several months, most recently when it announced a deal to access Twitter's "firehose" of data. But it presented its vision for real-time search before the media Monday at the Computer History Museum, claiming to have made a little history on its own.

Over the next few days, Google users will start to notice a box called "Latest results" on the main search results page for a topic that's guaranteed to produce results. Google used "Obama" as its example, and searches for that query place a new box that automatically scrolls through recent "real-time" results associated with that topic from sources like Twitter, FriendFeed, and Google News, as well as new Web pages--such as this story--as they are created.

The concept is hot in the search world: Microsoft's Bing also displays updates from Twitter and various blogs, although those results are not integrated with the main page. And Yahoo has also signed up with a company called OneRiot to throw its hat into the real-time search wars.

What's less clear, however, is how useful this technology will be unless Google and others working on the problem can bring the same degree of relevance and trust to real-time results that it brings to regular search results. Google News can already confuse the casual user who wonders how and why those particular headlines were singled out, so how will relevancy work when a stream of news can knock a particularly authoritative result off your screen in seconds?

"It's a very hard problem. Language understanding is still an unsolved problem," said Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow and one of the key players in developing this product. "Not only do we have to understand what someone is saying, but we have to get to the deeper semantics of what is indeed true. We have to work through many issues. Truth ends up being a rather vague notion."

In a way, this challenge is right up Google's alley. The company is obsessed with speed when it comes to presenting results, agonizing over whether design changes that add tenths of seconds to page-loading times are worth the effort.

And now that seemingly everyone has a blog, a microblog, a social-networking profile, and commenting identity (or 29), new content on the Internet is being generated at an astounding pace. Google used to think it would be able to index all the world's information in about 300 years, but CEO Eric Schmidt told CNET in November that one of Google's greatest challenges in the decades ahead will be staying abreast of the explosion in content enabled by social media.

That's why it's a bit surprising that Google, the world's leading search engine by a wide margin, hasn't necessarily been a leader in this area. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search and user experience at Google, admitted Monday the company could have moved more quickly to organize the vast amount of data produced by services such as Twitter. Anyone who has tried to use Twitter Search knows that real-time search at the moment is like the regular Internet was 10 years ago: a blast of information that's impressive in its scope but overwhelming in its usefulness.

But what Google is trying to do is leapfrog the notion of Twitter as the vanguard of the real-time content explosion. Twitter is undeniably hot at the moment, but new Web pages are generated constantly, especially as traditional media companies move online. One need only to think back to this summer when news reports of Michael Jackson's death sent millions online looking for confirmation, staggering services such as Google and Twitter under that load.

What will Google's real-time search look like the next time somebody famous dies?

(Credit: Google)

Google said it plans to display all kinds of Internet content in its "Latest news" box. Google didn't pay Twitter an undisclosed amount of money for access to its feed for no reason, however; the speed at which real-time content is generated can be harnessed much easier if search providers such as Google have that information pushed to them, rather than having to pull it out of the Web itself.

That raises the question of just how Google will index and rank real-time results. The company needs to develop the real-time equivalent of PageRank, which evaluates Web pages by the number of other pages that are linking to that page. That's something Google "is beginning to experiment with," Mayer said in a question-and-answer session following Google's presentation.

There's definitely some way to do that, but it certainly is not a simple problem. Someone with 15,000 Twitter followers is not necessarily as authoritative in one area as they are in another, and Google will have to figure out some way to evaluate this information to make it truly useful.

Until then, however, news junkies can entertain themselves watching the Latest results section spin with updates on Tiger Woods' latest paramour or the glacial progress of Congress' attempt to pass health-care reform legislation.

In a roughly 10-second period Monday afternoon on Google's Trends page, where it is testing out the real-time service, the feed for "Pearl Harbor Day"--the second most popular trend on the Internet Monday behind the aforementioned Tiger Woods--produced a tweet about a Pearl Harbor Day poem, a news story on people who were in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and a gentleman celebrating Ruby Diner's 27th anniversary with a $2.70 Rubyburger. (He also happened to note in his tweet that it was Pearl Harbor Day.)

Would you like to let AT&T know when your iPhone has dropped a call? Well, now there is an app for that.

AT&T on Monday released a new application called "Mark the Spot," which lets iPhone users submit complaints about dropped calls, poor service coverage, and less-than-perfect voice quality.

The application is free and available in the iTunes App Store. It uses GPS technology in the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS to pin point where the user is when experiencing the problems. For first generation iPhones, it uses cell tower-triangulation to get a fix on problem areas.

Once the application is launched, users have several complaint options. They will see a screen that has buttons that let them report a dropped call, poor voice quality, or poor service coverage.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T plans to use the data collected to identify trends and prioritize the company's network investments.

"We think this is a great way to get customer feedback to improve our network," Siegel said. "We are always looking for ways to make it easy for customers to share their experiences. And this app lets customers report issues. It logs the time and location and automatically forwards the information to our network planning team."

iPhone owners have been complaining about AT&T's network since the Apple iPhone went on sale in the summer of 2007. Complaints mounted after the 3G version of the phone was released a year later in 2008. And as more iPhone users come onto the network, more people, particularly in densely populated urban areas, such as New York City and San Francisco, have experienced problems with dropped calls and congested data networks.

AT&T executives have not admitted that AT&T has a problem with its network. But executives, such as AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan, have said that the company has seen a surge in data traffic attributed to iPhone users, who typically consume more wireless bandwidth than other AT&T wireless customers.

AT&T has been upgrading its network to keep up with demand. But problems persist. And AT&T's network recently got a poor ranking in terms of customer satisfaction in a Consumer Reports survey.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T's chief rival, has taken advantage of AT&T's struggles with a series of advertisements that point out AT&T's lack of 3G network coverage in certain parts of the country. Verizon is running advertisements that mock the Apple "There's an app for that," catch phrase with one that says, "There's a map for that."

AT&T fired back with a lawsuit and an advertisements of its own featuring actor Luke Wilson, who points out AT&T's strengths while taking a few shots at Verizon Wireless.

AT&T recently dropped its lawsuit against Verizon. And Verizon, which had been suing AT&T over claims that it has the fastest 3G wireless network, also dropped its lawsuit against AT&T.

Siegel said that the new "Mark the Spot" application was not prompted by the bad publicity around its network issues nor was it prompted by the current ad wars going on between AT&T and Verizon. Instead, he said that the application was simply a part of AT&T's ongoing commitment to listening to customers.

"We are always looking at ways to get customer feedback in as timely a manner as possible," he said. "That's why we pay attention to Twitter, Facebook and blog. One of the great values of these social networking tools is that it's a great way to get instant feedback. And it helps us identify problems."

The "Mark the Spot" application can be downloaded onto all iPhones running version 3.0 or later of Apple's operating system or it can be access using iTunes and synchronized to the iPhone via a PC or Mac.

Siegel said that AT&T is testing the "Mark the Spot" app for other devices. And he said AT&T hopes to offer applications on other smartphones in the future. No date has been announced yet. And Siegel didn't specify which devices might get the new application, but considering that AT&T sells a lot of Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, it's likely it will create an application for that device. The app could be offered through AT&T's own application storefront or through RIM's BlackBerry App World.

Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, takes a photo of the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan. The Google Goggles feature successfully identified it.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's first search engine let people search by typing text onto a Web page. Next came queries spoken over the phone. On Monday, Google announced the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph.

The experimental search-by-sight feature, called Google Goggles, has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what's been uploaded, said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more.

"It is our goal to be able to identify any image," he said. "It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query."

However, the feature is still in Google Labs to deal with the "nascent nature of computer vision" and with the service's present shortcomings. "Google Goggles works well on certain types of objects in certain categories," he said.

Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, speaking at a Google search event Dec. 7 in Mountain View, Calif.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google Goggles was one of the big announcements at an event at the Computer History Museum here to tout the future of Google search. The company also showed off real-time search results and translation of a spoken phrase from English to Spanish using a mobile phone.

"It could be we are really at the cusp of an entirely new computing era," Gundotra said, with "devices that can understand our own speech, help us understand others, and augment our own sight by helping us see further."

Offering one real-world example of the service in action, Gundotra said that when a guest came by for dinner, he snapped a photo of a wine bottle she gave him to assess its merits. The result--"hints of apricot and hibiscus blossom"--went far beyond his expertise, but that didn't stop him from sharing the opinion over dinner.

He also demonstrated Google Goggles to take a photo of the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan, a landmark tourists may recognize even if they can't read Japanese. The uploaded photo returned a description of the shrine on his mobile phone.

Although the service can recognize faces, since faces are among the billions of images in the database, it doesn't right now, Gundotra said.

"For this product, we made the decision not to do facial recognition," Gundotra said. "We still want to work on the issues of user opt-in and control. We have the technology to do the underlying face recognition, but we decided to delay that until safeguards are in place."

Google's search is a near-constant work in progress as the company strives to grow beyond supplying search results in the form of 10 hyperlinks to various Web pages.

"It's not just about 10 blue links," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience. "It's about the best answers."

"In the past 67 days, we launched 33 different search innovations," she boasted. "That's one innovation every two days."

Three more in the pipeline came to light on Monday. First, the mobile version of Google's search service to suggest completions to search queries now is geographically smart. That means, for example, a person in Boston typing "re" in a search box will see "Red Sox" as a suggested completion but a person in San Francisco will see "REI."

'Near me now' is a mobile service that shows local services to a mobile search user.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Second, a "near me now" service due to launch in coming weeks can tell users of iPhones and Android devices what's near them at a particular moment. Third, location supplied by the mobile phone can adjust product search results to show nearby stores that have a particular item in stock.

Sci-fi vision
Google isn't afraid of raising expectations of the service to the sci-fi level, where concepts such as augmented reality--an overlay of computer data that supplements what people see in the real world--have flourished for years.

Eventually, Google wants a system that lets people point to an object and retrieve information on it, Gundotra said--turning a person's finger into a real-world mouse pointer. "Today marks the beginning of that visual search journey," Gundotra said.

Google's system, like its Picasa face recognition software for photo management and face blurring in Google Maps' Street View, employs technology stemming from Google's 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, a start-up focusing on face and object recognition. Founder Hartmut Neven, still a Google employee, was at Monday's event.

Neven expressed pride for one aspect of the system: the fact that much of its background work happens with no human interaction through a process he called "unsupervised learning."

"The algorithms build models for visual recognition are unsupervised," Neven said. "Based on the photos we find, models--for example, the Empire State building--will emerge."

Live translation
Speaking of science fiction, Google also showed off technology that could turn mobile phones into a computerized translation system. It wasn't quite the babelfish of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," but it did translate Gundotra's question about where the nearest hospital is located into Spanish.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience, speaks at a Google search event Monday.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The technology works using a new communications conduit to Google servers. The raw utterance recorded by the mobile phone is sent to Google's servers, which first interpret it as English. It's then translated into Spanish, and the text is sent back to the mobile phone. A text-to-speech synthesizer on the phone--for the demonstration, a Droid model running Google's Android operating system--reads out the Spanish.

The service is set to launch in the first quarter of 2010, Gundotra said.

Google already offers the ability to search by voice--notably with applications for the iPhone and Android phones that today work in English and Mandarin Chinese.

Gundotra said Japanese now has joined the other options for the applications, and that more will come. "In 2010, you will see us dramatically expand our efforts and support more languages," he said.

Language is key to Google's mission and operations, and the company touted its progress in the area. Mayer said Google now can translate words from any of 51 languages into any other. In 2008, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the company expects to increase that to 100 languages.

"We are working to break down the language barrier," Mayer said. "That focus is what unlocks the Web."

Google's new real-time search interface automatically updates search results for hot topics like Tiger Woods, without requiring a browser refresh.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google announced Monday the fruits of its earlier deal with Twitter, showing off how it has decided to present real-time Internet content within search results.

Amit Singhal, Google fellow, introduced the real-time section during an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "We are here today to announce Google real-time search," Singhal said, calling it "Google relevance technology meets the real-time Web."

Google fellow Amit Singhal explains Google's strategy on how to present real-time search results.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Twitter search will show the latest matches for a particular search term, but Google wants to do more than sort results by time. "Relevance is the foundation of this product," Singhal said. "It's relevance, relevance, relevance."

Google will build a section called "latest results" into the regular Google search results page that automatically refreshes Internet content from sources like Twitter. Singhal showed off how a search for "Obama" would bring up tweets, Web pages, and other Internet content related to the president as it was generated. At the Web 2.0 conference in October, Google struck a deal with Twitter to get access to the service's "firehose" of tweets.

Updated 11:13 a.m. PST: Google plans to roll this out over the next several days, and not all users may see the new section immediately, Singhal said. The company also announced partnerships with social-networking companies Facebook and MySpace to display updates from those services.

Updated 11:22 a.m. PST: Real-time search at Google involves more than just social-networking and microblogging services. While Google will get information pushed to it through deals with those companies, it also has improved its crawlers to index and display virtually any Web page as it is generated. Facebook updates posted to public Facebook pages will be indexed, while any MySpace update designated as public will appear in search results.

Updated 11:30 a.m. PST: Google also demonstrated a Google Labs project called "Google Goggles," which allows a smartphone user to take a picture of a given object and send it to Google in hopes of finding out more information about that object. Up until the real-time announcement, mobile search was ruling the day, as Google's Vic Gundotra demonstrated Google Goggles, a new Android application that can show locations of interest surrounding a GPS position, and the ability for Japanese speakers to now use Google's voice search features.

Updated 12:42 p.m. PST: Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience, said real-time search took Google somewhat by surprise. "I wish we'd had the foresight to see this," she said.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience, speaks at a Google search event Monday.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Indeed, many people position Twitter, not Google, as central to the process of finding out what's going on right now.

There's a challenging balance between assessing what's new about a subject and what's correct, though, but Google believes the real-time search results will actually lead people to the truth faster, Singhal said. How do you assess the latest rumor when it can take time for the truth to emerge?

"Right now a straightforward answer is we emphasize quality and relevance. That often brings the truth out," Singhal said.

And when Google is deciding whether to include your own online musing, you're not just as good as your latest tweet. Just as it uses PageRank and other mechanisms to establish authority of a Web page for search, Google will apply its own measurements to those whose updates appear in real-time results.

Retweets and the number of followers a person has factor into Google's assessment of quality, he said.

Updated 2:02 p.m. PST: The real-time search features is computationally difficult, and Google had to develop more than a dozen technologies to get it working, Singhal said. Not only must it constantly monitor innumerable accounts for the latest updates, it must assess their quality and their relevance to particular queries.

Those who don't yet see the service can get to a version of it using the Google Trends site, which just emerged from beta testing. The "hot topics" area that shows items of high search interest at the moment, and clicking on one of the results shows search results with the scrolling real-time feed of information.

It's all part of getting people what they want, whether they know they want it or not. Mayer shared an example of a person buying a baby stroller.

"If you bought a product, you'd feel really foolish not knowing there was a recall," Mayer said.

And that challenge these days increasingly is a real-time phenomenon.

"In the early days of Google, we used to crawl (the Web for) information every month, then put up new index," a process called the Google dance, Singhal said. "A month was not fast enough. Then we were crawling the Web every few days, then every day, then every few hours. Now we can crawl every few minutes."

"In today's world that's not fast enough," Singhal said. "In this information environment, seconds matter."