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Filed under: Web services, Google

Froogle becomes Google Product Search

Froogle v. Google
When it rains Google news, it pours. The company goes and announces it's working on an online Power Point clone, adds charts to its spreadsheets, and launches a StumbleUpon style toolbar button all within a 24 hour period.

Now Google's decided to give its online price comparison page Froogle a new grownup sounding name, "Google Product Search." With the new name comes a streamlined look. The price and brand options that used to take up some serious screen real estate at the top of the page have moved to the bottom, leaving just the "Show Google Checkout items only" link at the top.

You still won't see Google Product Search as one of the main options above the search bar on Google's home page. But now when you click "more," you'll be presented with "Products," as an option, rather than "Froogle." That alone should increase traffic to the site dramatically, as many users probably never clicked on Froogle simply because they didn't know what the heck it was.

[via Search Engine Land]

Filed under: Business, Web services, Google

Froogle successor uncovered?

Froogle 2?
ZDNet's Garett Rogers says he's discovered Google's secret-until-now replacement for Froogle. Back in September Google announced that it would roll out a new product search engine by the holiday season, but it has yet to materialize--or has it? Doing a little poking around, Rogers uncovered this site in the same area of Google's web site as Google Base. It's a product search engine that lets you refine your search in a variety of ways--type, brand, price--and lets you see the results in three formats: List, Grid, and Map. The List view looks a bit like a standard Google results page, Grid view looks a bit like Google Images, and Map view looks like Google Maps.

The site is clearly in beta, or maybe alpha, as its results are sometimes nonsensical. As Rogers points out, a search for "iPod" is next to useless if you want to buy one, as it turns up more MySpace and Friendster pages than actual stores. Interestingly, the site seems intended to do more than just product search: A search for "athletic" gives you options like Age, Gender, Marital Status, and Sign, a search for "ranch" gives you real estate-related options, and a search for "sedan" gives you car-shopping options.

So, is this the new Froogle? I'm not sure. It must be something--Google wouldn't give it a URL and make it publicly accessible if it wasn't part of a product that will eventually be launched. However, with results that are often confusing and occasionally useless, what's available today (and it may or may not be available tomorrow) clearly isn't a finished product.

Filed under: Web services, Google

Google tweaks home page, adds Google Video

Google VideoGoogle has made some changes to its home page, removing the Froogle and Google Groups links from above the search box and adding a link to Google Video in their place. The new home page adds a "More" link which, when clicked, reveals links for Books, Froogle, Groups, and "even more." These are the first changes to Google's home page in recent memory, and I'm hoping that the increased emphasis on Google Video means that service will be getting more features soon.

[Via Google Blogoscoped]

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