Search Cube scours Google in 3D

Search Cube is the latest in a string of search engines that forgoes displaying search results in an easy-to-parse, ordered list, in favor of a whiz-bang 3D interface. It grabs its results from Google and site preview thumbnails from Thumbshots, then combines them in a 3D cube that you can rotate freely either with your mouse or keyboard.

What's clearly missing here are which results are worth clicking on, something you get with Google's search result relevance algorithm. On the flip side (literally), you get to see a lot more results at once, and with a little visual flair.

Where I think this engine could really be useful is in providing a better preview of the source page, along with letting you know how relevant a result it is. As it stands, clicking on any of the results takes you off the engine and into a new tab or window. It would be much simpler to open up a full preview of the page where you could view the content akin to tools like SearchMe.

See also: Viewzi, Pixsy, OSkope, ManagedQ, and RedZee.
Related: Mozilla, graphics group seek to build 3D Web

Here's a quick demo of what it looks like (a higher-quality stream should be live soon):

[slecalvez]

Terrible idea...

[Angmarr]

Not Practical Yes, but try these They Look cooler .. much cooler!

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

http://taggalaxy.de/

[Josh.Lowensohn]

@Angmarr, yes those are neat. I had seen the Tag Galaxy project before, but not the tag browser for Flickr.

[tweak589]

This is stupid. I searched for the most basic things, and in the time I could find my results on Google in an "easy-to-parse ordered list", I was still trying to rotate it with controls completely separate from browsing behaviors. It gets old in just a few minutes.

Probably best for someone's design portfolio. But for everyday use? No thanks.

[randsgil]

Well I tried it out and the idea of seeing the page BEFORE you click on it as pretty neat, i like that. But mine displayed the pages upside down and no matter what i did to display it right side up it flipped them upside down, so obviously a lot more time needs to be spent in the lab on this, but great concept!

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Upside down? Sounds very experimental...maybe it's part of the experience :D