Appendix C: Late Breaking Google Web Services News

This appendix brings you late breaking news about Google Web Services as of the time of this writing. With many products, there are definite breaks in the development cycle so you can say one version is complete and another is beginning. The Web makes it easy to create products that have a continuous development cycle ”there aren't any real versions to consider. Google Web Services falls into this category.

The following sections describe some of the latest Google Web Services features. Many of these features are new additions to the search engine itself that you'll eventually access using special calls with the Web service. In most cases, these features don't appear as part of the Web service today. These new features make Google more useful by helping you do more with less effort. You'll also find that these new features make it easier for you to create robust applications that fulfill more user needs.

Google Viewer

The Google Viewer is a new tool that lets you view the results of a Web search as a slideshow. The benefit of this approach is that you can see the Web pages without actually visiting them. In short, you view the search results graphically, rather than working with a text description. Of course, the slideshow includes the usual snippet so you can see where the search terms come into play.

Using this technique does make searching faster when you're looking for complex information but slows things down considerably when you need something simple. For example, when you need to find a Web page with a table or other feature that you remember seeing during previous research, this technique can help you find it faster. On the other hand, when you're looking for a site that offers a very specific piece of information and you don't care what format the site uses, then this feature probably won't help much. You can learn more about this feature at http://labs.google.com/gviewer.html.