Google Squared

An article by Darin Wagner

Have you heard about this?

Google Squared is an experimental tool that takes a category (like US presidents, roller coasters, or digital cameras) and attempts to create a starter “square” of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web. You can modify your square by removing rows and columns you don’t like–or by adding new rows and columns and having Google Squared attempt to fetch the relevant facts. Verify and correct the facts in your square by exploring the original sources and investigating other possible values. If you’re happy with your square you can save it and come back to it later. Google Squared does the grunt work for you, making research fast and easy.

Here is the result of a search for Heisman Trophy winners. The original search result included columns for images, height, weight, high school, and place of birth. I deleted the columns by clicking on the x on the right side of the column title. Easy.

Next, I added two more columns – year and position – to the search results. After entering the term, Google searched automatically for the data that best matched. Sometimes the data in a square displayed in gray. When I moused over the square a message appeared indicating that there was “Low confidence” in the data displayed, or sometimes I had the option of selecting from “other values”. When I clicked on the “other values” I was presented with a list from which to choose.

I am not sure where this is going but it looks promising. I did this with a list of football players but students could use this search tool to compare planets, authors, animals, etc. Instead of searching one at a time, multiple topics are organized into one space. Columns and rows are easily added and deleted.

Once the data is organized and refined there are options to share, export, and save. Export formats include .csv and Google Spreadsheets. All these options make it easy to format and collaborate.

Take a look at this short introduction video: