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Google Trials A9 Style Image Search 221

Posted by samzenpus from the be-careful-what-you-search-for dept.
Grugnog writes "Google has started including images from it's image search on the main search page. This is similar to Amazon's A9 search engine. With Google kicking off Google Print (A9's other specialty) could A9 become redundant?"
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Google Trials A9 Style Image Search More

Google Trials A9 Style Image Search

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  • dumb question (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    google's finally copying someone else, and you wonder if A9 is redundant? Talk about google-fanboy!

    We should be happy that there's actually innovation happening. competition is good.
    • How is this innovation? It's copying. You just said that.

      Sorry, but your attempt at karma whoring has failed.

    • Re:dumb question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:56PM (#11416662)
      You mean Google doing web search, A9 using Google's web and image search results to enhance (their word) the results, now Google doing search which you/they/whatever say it's a copy of A9's. Now, stop that, I'm spinning. From the beginning A9 was a results ripoff with it's own interface. If they have something really worth using, that should do us (users) just good and fine, a little competitiveness can never hurt (if you leave MS out of it, that is :P ).

  • No... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by osobear ( 761394 )
    Become redundant? No. Competition is always good and is always needed. Does a Toyota Camry make a Ford Taurus redundant?
    • Right, but that analogy only flies if you owned both cars and always had a choice of what to drive. Then, after a very short time, one of the two (the inferior one I would hope) would become essentially redundant to you.
      • and always had a choice of what to drive.
        Are you suggesting that people do not have choice in what search engine to use? If that were the case, I don't see how Google could have ever become number #1 wrt the search market.
    • Yes. But people can and do buy either model.
    • Well, the Taurus appearently makes the Contour redundant... :)

  • A9 Seems Redundant Already (Score:3, Funny)

    by filmmaker ( 850359 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:38PM (#11415720) Homepage
    With Google kicking off Google Print (A9's other specialty) could A9 become redundant?"

    Wasn't it always? I spent some time on A9 one day -- liked the inline images -- but overall wasn't impressed. I'm sure there are dozens of handy, idiosyncratic features I missed that I'll be informed of momentarily, but my first impression was "blah."

    I'd like to see more mixing of results onto a single page though. Seeing the first few images and the first few Froogle results would be a nice addition.
    • True, but you can get a small discount at Amazon if you use their A9 browser before making a purchase.
    • Something I liked with A9 was an easily accessible site info page with a site review and even rating, along with other misc. info like page ranking (from Amazon.com? Alexa?) The link was right next to the search result, like "show cached" is in Google.

      What would be nice is if Google had something like this that wasn't tied into Amazon.com like that, and gave graphs for PageRank history instead of whatever ranking technology they had used.

  • Ummm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by keeleysam ( 792221 )
    http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&q=tr aktor&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]
    ummm... i'm not getting pictures....
    • you're using google suggest, that might be it

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by game kid ( 805301 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:54PM (#11415858) Homepage
      ummm... i'm not getting pictures....

      me neither. I, and certainly keeleysam, feel duped and disappointed.

      The posted link [grugnog.com] is not Google [google.com] though it seems genuine; its much larger home page [grugnog.com] is, in fact, a blog.

      Makes me glad to have a status bar on my browser.

      • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)

        by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:21PM (#11416455)
        I... feel duped

        No, no, no... that comes later. Possibly as early as tomorrow.
    • Do you have the magic cookie? Are you in the correct subnet? Did you read the previous google story?

      They quite often test new stuff on particular IP ranges. I think it was exodus or something that got "tested" on more often than others.

  • Patents (Score:2, Funny)

    by tajmorton ( 806296 )
    Does Amazon have a patent on any of this? After all, they do have the "one-click" patent...

  • Kinda.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krin ( 519611 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:39PM (#11415735) Homepage
    throws the whole feel of Google off. The less images the better.
  • Where did you actually see it? Screenshots aren't that great without a URL, and even with it's kind of iffy.
    • Google Suggest, take a look at the logo, although it won't display for me any longer.
    • No gurantee you can see it. Google sometimes tests out new features on a specific subnet, as noted in a Slashdot post just days ago, so if you're not in that subnet you're just not going to be able to see the images.

      Multiple posters in this thread have verified the post. I believe it.

  • NSFW (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kdark1701 ( 791894 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:40PM (#11415743) Homepage
    So what if pornographic images pop up? Say I search for my friend's name, and then there's porn thumbnails across the screen. Not good for those of us who use google in public.

    • Re:NSFW (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:49PM (#11415827)
      Reminds me when I was in junior high (and the Internet was young), we all started trying www.dot-com's of each others' names. The girls' names usually led to porn sites. Come to think of it, that must be have been kind of hurtful when the girls see how they are just seen as sex objects

      • Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)

        by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:19PM (#11416440)
        The girls' names usually led to porn sites. Come to think of it, that must be have been kind of hurtful when the girls see how they are just seen as sex objects

        Give it up, berk. There are no girls here on slashdot, so that fake sensitivity crap will get you nowhere.
    • Google has SafeSearch enabled by default for images, so you would have to explicitly turn it off in order to see adult images.

      • Re:NSFW (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jesser ( 77961 )
        You assume that SafeSearch successfully blocks all porn.

      • Google has SafeSearch enabled by default for images, so you would have to explicitly turn it off in order to see adult images.

        Not always. Searching for my wife's name [google.ca] with SafeSearch on, I get a NSFW image in the 3rd row. A scary one at that, too.

        Obviously, that link may or may not be NSFW...

    • Probably a fake story, since directly accessing google suggest does not bring up any such images. Leads one to suspect that these images are being inserted by grugnog.com itself using some script to fetch images from google image search. While a neat idea, such a feature would be actually a major concern. For example, a sociologist at work place, searching for "sex inquality" might have images being displayed based on just the first keyword. Not to mention, images somehow are more offending in nature at t
    • Say I search for my friend's name, and then there's porn thumbnails across the screen.

      What kind of friends do you have?! .... And when can I meet them?!!
    • I wonder if they'll ever have pictures for a search for tits [nice-tits.org]?

    • Err what's NSFW by the way? New Stuff For Wanking?

  • A9 IS google image search... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:40PM (#11415744)

    I'm pretty sure that A9/Amazon is using google's image search in it's engine. The bottom of A9 says:

    Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by a9.com and Alexa.

    Also, from the faq [a9.com]

    Who provides web search results? A9.com's Web Search Results are enhanced by Google. Data provided by A9.com and Alexa Internet is also used for search history and Site Info.

    since it doesn't mention the images as from Alexa, and since I'm guessing the A9 stuff is Amazon's inside the book, it seems logical that the image search is from google.

  • Well Google Print may trump A9, but how does a dinky little 3 images at the top do much of anything? I mean I could have clicked the "Images" link before and gotten the same thing. In my opinion, nothing has changed in the image department. Google Print does look nice though, although it is at a different angle than A9's system, so I don't think it's completely redundant.
  • Searched for "traktor" on Google and Google Suggest (like in the example) and got nothing. Anyone got a live link as an example?
    • After researching this a bit, it appears slashdot was duped. The screenshot is a fake and the site that was linked to just made up a mock google web site and stuck the images in the top. Check the source of the html, the images and things are linked off of Google but the html appears to be from a different source. Either that or I'm seriously mis reading things and confused as hell.
      Regards,
      Steve

      • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

        by LocoSpitz ( 175100 )
        Duped? Not necessarily.

        The HTML is from a different source because the guy just mirrored the Google page on his own site.

        Why? Because oftentimes Google offers new features only to certain subnets. As that may indeed be the case here, which would explain why some but not all Slashdot users appear able to use this new feature, it only makes sense to offer a mirror or screenshot; otherwise, most people could not see this new feature.

        And if the guy was trying to trick people into thinking his page was actual
  • It's only been in existence for a short while! Plus it was mainly a front-end for all the google services with some extra functionality.

    In other news, redundant questions at the end of Slashdot articles have already grown mildly since 2004.

  • elaborate scam? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:42PM (#11415781) Homepage Journal
    *****************
    domain: GRUGNOG.COM
    owner-address: Owen Barton
    owner-address: 14 Parc Derwen
    owner-address: Glan Conwy
    owner-address: LL28 5BZ
    owner-address: Colwyn Bay
    owner-address: United Kingdom
    *****************

    when you use normal google there's no pics. then there's no explanation wtf is this grugnog.com

    and there's no pics on normal google... which is good. pics suck most of the time when you're looking for information in TEXT.
    • Agreed. Pics do suck if you're looking for text. Especially if bandwidth is an issue. But, a preferences setting that allowed images or other types of results (like Froogle) to come inline with Google's web results would very cool - and I think a lot of people would use it.
      • Froogle results are already in the main search area on Google. For example, a search for "AMD Motherboard [google.com]" returns 3 Froogle results above the main search results. They're marked with a little shopping-bag icon. You can get similar results for news items ("Bush inauguration [google.com]," with a little newspaper icon) or stock quotes ("rhat [google.com]," Red Hat's ticker symbol, with a little chart icon).

        Personally, I don't think the mini-results above the main search area bother me at all - they can help me find what I want fas

    • Obviously it's not bullshit because if you go to www.google.com and type in "traktor" as a query, you get pics. It only works on certain queries.

      • Re:It's not a scam (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )
        i did not get pics on google.com when typing traktor there, not even on the google suggest beta site.

        local differences or whatever(but google suggest seems to use the same server anywhere..).. but the poster should have had the courtesy to link to GOOGLE, and not his own site pretending it's official google.

        • Re:It's not a scam (Score:2, Informative)

          by United544 ( 851579 )
          Have you stopped to think that possibly the reason it wasn't linked to Google is because it doesn't show up for everybody who does a search? As others have already noted, Google phases in new features over a period of time. So the poster took a screenshot and posted those instead, I can't speak for others, but I for one would call that a courteous gesture...
          • yes, afterwards.

            but you see. IT WAS NOT MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE BLURB, and it's such a thing that any sensible person would have mentioned "here is what it looks like" - now it was just LINKS to grugnog AS IF it was google.

    • Re:elaborate scam? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:00PM (#11415904) Homepage Journal
      flamebait? wtf? how is it flamebait pointing out that the SITE IS NOT GOOGLES? it's all public information anyways.

      the site might have worked for 10 secs, that i could admit. but it sure as hell has nothing to do with official google. such a search frontend, like a9, that included images as well would be pretty easy to implement with googleapi.

      so at best some guy coded his 'own' crappy version of a9, at worst he just hand made the html for whatever reason, maybe he's trying to score on the googleads there. ....but one thing is 99.99% sure: THE FUCKING NEWS POST IS FRAUDALENT.

      • Re:elaborate scam? (Score:3, Informative)

        by LocoSpitz ( 175100 )
        Or maybe, just maybe, it's REAL and he's mirroring the results page, because Google doesn't always unveil new features like this to everyone all at once. Oftentimes new features are released only to certain subnets before they are put into wide release.

        Calm down, man.

        • Re:elaborate scam? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )
          you know, then he should have told us so that we would have known - and even then the story would have been unverifiable, he could have just as well said that google creates a mindmap out of every search.

          as now it only looks like he took some html and edited in pictures - with no explanations whatsoever.
    • Notice that the PNG header states that it's created by Adobe ImageReady.

      I don't know about you, but I tend to use Paintbrush if all I want is a screen capture....
    • "elaborate" is giving the Slashdot editor a _little_ too much credit.

      What, did timothy change his name to samzenpus?

    • Re:elaborate scam? (Score:2, Informative)

      by dcavens ( 178673 )
      As mentioned in a previous slashdot story [slashdot.org], Google often tries new features on a subset of users. Depending on how they work and feedback from users, they may or may not include them in the standard interface.

      For those too lazy to click through to the original article [blog-city.com] referenced by the above story, the relevant line is:

      Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new fea
  • How long before one sues the other for stealing their 'patented' business plan?

  • i hate titling posts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knights who say 'INT ( 708612 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:43PM (#11415783) Journal
    But A9's results are provided by Google, so if Google manages to provide the same services A9 does, then A9 _is_ redundant.

  • Being taken for a ride? (Score:4, Informative)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:43PM (#11415786) Homepage
    Grugnog.com is some guy's page, and submitting anything in that search box just gives a 404. Is this the musing of a guy who posts stuff to slashdot that he doesn't even mention in his blog (on the root of the domain)?
    • maybe it's just a showing of how crap of a random job the editors take while combing through the potential news items.

      you can get anything on slashdot.
    • So what? Did you look at the submitter? He probably submits a story every day about random crap. Who says he has to blog that he submitted a story to slashdot? His blog entries are probably automatically generated from other news feeds or something anyway. Its clearly a site in development, and hes just used his site to host the image.
    • From what I've read in other comments in this Slashpost, it's legit. The guy just posted a mirror of the results page on his website.

      As was noted in a FPP earlier this week, Google often releases new features only to certain subnets before offering them in wide release. This may be one of those cases, which would explain why not everyone can view the images.

  • Nuthin' (Score:2, Funny)

    by liangzai ( 837960 )
    Tried searching "pussy", got no pics. Lame joke. Mod parent down to hell.
  • Damn it Slashdot, you ruined it! Half the fun of google is finding the new stuff hidden away

  • But will it be updated? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigDawgES ( 821410 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:54PM (#11415854)
    Remember when . . .

    There was a slashdot story about how you couldn't find any of the Abu Ghraib abuse photos on google image search, and people cried censorship only to realize that google simply hadn't updated its image database?

    Anyone have an idea about the current update schedule of google image search?

  • WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by derEikopf ( 624124 )
    This is stupid. It's not on Google's site, all other searches yield a 404, and if you click on "Images" then on "Web" again at the top, the images disappear. Editors, what were you thinking?
    • Of COURSE it's not on Google's site. Of COURSE the images disappear. Of COURSE other searches yield a 404.

      I don't doubt that the editors were well aware that this is not, in fact, google.com; I am sure that samzenpus has a status bar.

      This is a mirror of a Google results page. You may have noticed when it was returned by Mirrordot.

      Why mirror a Google results page? Because as noted in a Slashdot post just days ago, new Google features are often tested out on specific subnets. If you're not in the subnet, y

  • Well, I get no pictures either, but the link at the top of grugnog.com or whatever it was called goes here:

    http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&complete=1 [google.com]

    that provides a combo-box style dropdown suggesting things you might like to search for, as you type. Seems kinda neat, though I'm not sure how helpful it'd be...

    Is this news, or has it been around for a while?

  • More info (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grugnog ( 45345 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:00PM (#11415902)
    For what it's worth, the magic word is trials. Google doesn't release a new feature to everyone at once - specific subnets will see the feature first. Even I only see this with a search for 'traktor' - other searches just look the same.

    Maybe others in the /. herd can verify if they get this?

    ...I am redirecting to mirrordot to avoid server meltdown :)

  • This is bogus (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Xoo ( 178947 )
    Not to repeat what everyone else is saying, but this is definately bogus.

    Grugnog used the following URL to access the page in the first pic of his search for "traktor":

    http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&lr=& safe=off&c2coff=1&q=traktor&btnG=Search [google.com]

    As you can see it shows the typical google search results page with the TEXT ads at top. After subsequent refreshes of my browser, I got the same thing.

    I browsed around Google Suggest, even the Advanced Options, and go

    • Re:This is bogus (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Vacindak ( 669486 )
      Actually, no this is not bogus, mod parent down. A couple of days ago, before this story hit, I happened to notice this feature when I did a google search for "loneliness" since I couldn't remember how to spell it. Got three images up at the top of the page, exactly like what the article showed. Subsequent attempts to get those results met with failure. So this is just a case of Google rolling things out to specific subnets. Not a hoax guys.

  • Strange... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:04PM (#11415934) Homepage
    I changed "Traktor" to read "Upskirt" and I got a 404 page.

    I hope google doesn't make this new behaviour permanent.

  • Something tells me new boy samzenpus will be looking for new job.

    Hopefully on google and not grugnog...
  • Every time there's a new Linux Distro, someone brings up an argument that it will kill all the others, and be the only one in existance... each one is deemed perfect, and makes the others look bad.

    Ends up each one has it's own strong points, weaknesses... each has a niche audience of it's own... who find it perfect.

    IMHO that's the direction search is going. A9 will specialize a bit more in print service (since Amazon excels in that). I wouldn't be suprised if Amazon gets into eCommerce...

    allow other co
  • What I'd like to see Google add is previews of the web pages like IceRocket [icerocket.com] does. When you do a search on there you see a thumbnail of the web page next to the entry for that web page. You can also click on the quick view link next to each result and it'll expand a frame below the entry to show you the page itself. It's a quick way to see if a site is what you wanted without having to leave the search page.

  • It is possible (Score:2, Informative)

    by Quixote ( 154172 )
    It is possible, if this feature is in trial, that few people will see it.

    From the earlier /. story [slashdot.org] titled "Google Tidbits" which mentioned this blog entry [blog-city.com] about "an evening with Google's Marissa Mayer", we find that:
    Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example.

    So, it is possible that only people in this guy's subnet are seeing these pictures of "Traktor"...

  • It'll give goatse search a kick in the rear (Score:3, Funny)

    by Linuxathome ( 242573 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @12:43AM (#11416908) Homepage Journal
    I'm sure I'm not the first person to bet that goatse.cx will increasingly be ruining young minds when google image results is truly implemented in the main search page.

  • A friend saw this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Captain Nitpick ( 16515 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @12:55AM (#11416951)

    I was on IRC back on January 6, and a friend of mine got some images at the top of a particular Google search. Nobody else on the channel could reproduce it, and it wasn't appearing for him on any other search.

    His screenshot was identically formatted to these.

  • Google like many other web companies probably does some amount of A B testing. This is a way to get feedback and gauge response from a feature by releasing it to a small subset of the total population. The results of one group A are then compared to the total population B.

    As an example Amazon uses A B testing all the time with many A B tests happening every day. They track to see if small changes that they make have any impact in the percentage of their users who purchase products.

    It's very likely that Go
  • I love it. Now grugnog randomly redirects to comments in this thread and mirrordot. Obviously slashdot has been trolled big time.

    Hey Samzenpus: YHL. HAND.

  • does not rollout this feature.

    More complexity is not what's needed on the Google home page. There is an images button for image searching. How many people really need the visual context.

    Now, page thumbnails... I might go for that actually, but including images for the hell of it does not add any real value that I can see.

    Shareholders looking for something to talk about? It's still early, but maybe this and the dumb changes to the Groups interface show signs of Google falling under the influence of Wa
  • When I went home from college for Christmas break, I saw this feature pop up a few times randomly on my search results page. It didn't look like it does in the article though. It said "Images" in a blue bar just like the word "web" in the photo. There were 4 image results (unlike the 3 on the linked image) and the background was blue like the bar. Then underneath it said "web" and continued as usual. I bet the feature has changed in appearance since then. It was around December 22nd at the time. Google is
  • There is a Firefox extension that shows preview images (thumbnails) of the sites in the google search results page:

    GooglePreview Firefox extension [mozilla.org]
  • Sorry if I'm a little late to the party here, but I had never heard of A9. So it was a little disturbing when I went there and it greeted me by my full name. Reading their privacy policy [a9.com], it looks like it's nothing more than a way for Amazon to get more info on you and track you better so they know what to try and sell you.

    Hopefully Google won't be adding those types of A9 style "features". I don't care if A9 is "A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF AMAZON.COM, INC.", I don't like it. At least they shout about i

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