Google Chrome to Improve Bookmark Management

Some recent Chromium builds added many features that improve bookmark management and they'll probably be available in a future Google Chrome update (to find the difference between Chrome and Chromium, read this post).

The most notable new feature is a bookmark manager that lets you find bookmarks, move them to a new folder or easily delete a large number of bookmarks. In the Tools drop-down, there are options to import bookmarks from a HTML file and to export bookmarks in a similar format.


Another useful new feature is the option to import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks. The browser incorrectly mentions that the bookmarks are imported from Google Toolbar, since the toolbar doesn't even have to be installed. For now, the bookmarks aren't synchronized with Google Bookmarks.

View Office Open XML Files as HTML

Google started to support Microsoft's Office Open XML formats in Gmail and web search. You can now view as HTML documents created using Microsoft Office 2007: .docx documents, .xslx spreadsheets and .pptx presentations.



Google Docs doesn't yet support importing Open XML files, but you can use online services like Zamzar, Zoho Writer or software like OpenOffice 3.0, Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to convert your files.

{ Thanks, Sushovan De. }

Google Forum Search

Much like Google Video, Google Groups expanded its index from the Usenet discussion boards and the Google-hosted groups to almost all discussion boards from the web. The results show the same enhanced snippets that were added to the web search last month.


It's interesting to notice that Google's help forums for different services are moving to a new platform initially created for a Yahoo Answers-like Q&A service. Some of the forums have already migrated (Google Talk, Chrome, AdSense) and the benefits are clear: the new forums clearly delimit answers from questions, answered questions from unanswered questions and they encourage people to answer more questions. After migrating its own help forums, Google might make the platform code-named Confucius available to the public.


{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Find YouTube Playlists

The option to find playlists is back at YouTube. Playlists are a great way to group related videos which can be later played one after another.

YouTube shows three popular videos from each playlist and it lets you restrict the results to a certain category, like Education, Music or Sports.


Creating a playlist is easy and, by default, each playlist is public and can be embedded in a web page. Instead of posting 3 or 4 related YouTube videos, create a playlist and use the code provided by YouTube to add it to your web page: you'll include a single player and the visitors will only need to click on the "play" button once.

Google Image Search Exposes Content Filters

Google Image Search lets you restrict the results using some content filters introduced in May 2007 directly from the standard interface. Until now, the options were available in the rarely-used advanced search page.

There are two kinds of filters:

* images from specialized search engines: news content shows images from Google News' index (news articles from the past 30 days)

* image analysis filters: Google uses face detection technology to find images that include faces and an interesting algorithm that finds photos.


I think the news content filter makes more sense as a Google News filter and it should be expanded to the entire News Archive. Microsoft's Live Search has three additional filters: illustrations, portraits, non-portraits that include faces, which are useful for some searches.

Google Profile Search

You can now search Google profiles to find people who entered some information about themselves in their public pages. Google shows a thumbnail and a snippet from the profile, but you can't restrict the results to a certain location or to people who worked for a certain company.


To make your profile more findable, Google recommends to "add information about yourself on your profile so people can find you when they search by keywords associated with your profile. For example, include details such as the name of your hometown, your job title, where you work or go to school". In addition to this specialized search engine, profiles can be indexed by any search engine and Google makes this easier.

Yahoo has recently updated user profiles to make them more social. "Yahoo! Profiles is a centralized control panel that lets you manage your identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo! — and eventually the entire Web."

The next challenge is creating an universal profile attached to a digital identity that gathers and filters all your disparate activities from the web. The move towards OpenID, OAuth, the integration of OpenSocial in Google's properties, the launch of FriendConnect are pieces from the same puzzle.

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

How Google Promotes Chrome

Is Chrome the most heavily promoted Google product? Like for many other products, Google "buys" AdWords ads to promote Chrome, but there are many other places where you can find Chrome ads.


When it was launched, Google placed a link on the homepage which stayed there for a week. At the same time, Chrome gained a prominent placement on Google Japan's homepage, next to services like YouTube or Gmail:


Andreas spotted an ad for Google Chrome in Taipei (Creative Commons-licensed image):


Starting from today, YouTube promotes Chrome on the homepage and the bottom of every page:


The promotion is similar to the last month's ad from orkut (screenshot licensed as Creative Commons):


If you download Chrome from one of these sites, Google will append a RLZ parameter to each Google search URL. "RLZ contains some encoded information, such as where you downloaded Google Chrome and where you got it from. This parameter does not uniquely identify you, nor is it used to target advertising. This information is used to understand the effectiveness of different distribution mechanisms, such as downloads directly from Google vs. other distribution channels," explains Chromium Blog.

It's unclear whether Google "will do well to expand its business", but Chrome seems to be a part of a strategic initiative to make Google more visible on the desktop, a mix between Google Toolbar, Google Desktop and Gears that turned into a browser and that needs a critical mass to be taken seriously.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }