Other Upcoming Google Projects

The projects in Google Labs aren't the only new Google projects being readied for market. Let's take a quick look at a few of the more promising future Google sites and servicesso promising that they'll probably be "live" by the time you read this book!

Tip

Until Google Music launches, you can amuse yourself with Google Music Search (www.google.com/musicsearch?q). This is a direct link into the music search feature we first discussed in Chapter 10, "Searching for Other Special Information."

Google Health

Google Health (www.google.com/health) is designed as a one-stop portal for all health and medical-related issues. Look here for links to health-related news stories as well as content from various medical databases.

Google Music

Google Music (www.google.com/music) is rumored to be a repository for downloadable digital music files, and a potential competitor for Apple's iTunes Music Store. Whether Google Music will offer free downloads, paid downloads, or subscription services is not yet known.

Note

If you want to see an example of something that's not on Google's future release schedule, check out Google Romance (www.google.com/romance)a remarkably well-thought-out April Fools' Day joke that fooled lots of folks on the Web.

Google Write

This may or may not be the final name for what is set to be a companion to Google Spreadsheets. Google Write will be a web-based word processor application, based on Writely, a recent Google acquisition. Expect Google Write to offer many of the same features of Microsoft Word, but in a web-based environment with document sharing and collaboration. And, like Google Spreadsheets, this one should be freewhich will give Google a good start towards a Microsoft Office suite competitor.

Orkut

Orkut (www.orkut.com) is unlike some other sites in the Google network, in that Google acquired it ready-made, instead of building it from the ground up. Orkut is a social networking site, similar to MySpace, that lets you socialize with all your online friends, as well as find new friends, based on your own interests. (Figure 42.11 shows what an Orkut user profile looks like.)

Commentary: The Moving Target

Writing a book about Google is kind of like shooting at a moving target. That's because Google is constantly adding new features, services, and productsand updating all its existing ones.

Since I started writing this book, I've had to add no fewer than three new chapters to deal with newly launched Google features, and do midstream updates of a half-dozen other chapters. When I started writing, Google had yet to launch Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Video, Google Notebook, or Google Co-op; Google Maps was still called Google Local; and Gmail didn't have half as many functions as it now does.

All these changes not only keep me on my toes as a writer, it also makes it difficult for the average user to keep up with all the new stuff that Google is doing. Let's face it; the average Google user doesn't use much more than the basic search page, so it's easy to miss some of the cool new features that get added on a regular basis.

To that end, I recommend two useful and informative Google-related blogs. The first is the Official Google Blog (googleblog.blogspot.com); as the name implies, this is Google's official blog, which is where all new products and services are officially introduced on launch. The other blog is the Unofficial Google Weblog (google.weblogsinc.com), which is a gossipy blog that always seems to have the inside scoop on what Google is about to be doing. I find both invaluable for keeping up on what Google is up to.