essay on searching answers on google

Searching Answers on Google: the Digital Transformation of Memory and Society

How it works

• 1 The Influence of Technology and Google on Memory
• 2 Searching Answers on Google: Memory’s New Ally
• 3 Digital Dementia and Dependence on Technology
• 4 Google’s Impact on Society and Interpersonal Relationships
• 5 References:

The Influence of Technology and Google on Memory

Do you remember what a struggle it was to remember information? Now, with a Google search, the answers are right at your fingertips. Although technology has improved our lives in many ways, it has changed the way our brain works and processes information. Technology, like Google Web, has also changed the way we live our daily lives and the way we learn. The average number of Google searches per day has grown from 9,800 in 1998 to over 4.

7 trillion today. Our brain uses information stored in long-term memory to further our critical thinking. In order to understand and interact with the world around us, we need these unique memories.

Searching Answers on Google: Memory’s New Ally

Although technology may not affect the information we receive, it does affect how we store it in our memory. Even though our brains can hold almost an infinite amount of information, technology can still have an effect on how much information we are able to store. According to Benjamin Storm, who leads a study says,“ Memory is changing. Our research shows that as we use the Internet to support and extend our memory, we become more reliant on it.” He continues to say that we would have to try to recall information on our own; now, we don’t even bother. As more information becomes available via Google, it becomes more reliant on our daily lives, he says. Our brains are slowly adapting to the technology. There is no need to memorize a map when GPS is in place to lead the way, and people can begin to lose their sense of direction. There is also little need to memorize phone numbers, because smartphones automatically program contacts. It’s helpful to have Google available for data about anything and GPS that guarantees we never make a wrong turn. We are likewise ending up more defenseless to what specialists are calling advanced dementia. People can travel all around the world without a psychical map; with the capability of Google Maps, you can easily track where you are or where your destination is with a push of a button. Because of technology, we don’t rely on our memory as much. As technology does more for us, we rely on our memories less.

Digital Dementia and Dependence on Technology

Dementia is a loss of mental ability severe enough to interfere with normal activities of daily living. According to the blog “ Overuse of Technology Can Lead to digital dementia,” individuals who rely on technology may suffer deterioration in cerebral performance, such as short-term memory dysfunction. This blog continuously says how people have become highly dependent on technology to the point where it is ruining our brains. A study conducted at UCLA has shown some important information about the developing brains of young people. They’re spending 7 hours a day attached to technology. The effects on their brains are proving to be very damaging. “Over-use of smartphones and game devices hampers the balanced development of the brain,” Byun Gi-won, a doctor at the Balance Brain Center in Seoul, told the JoongAng Daily newspaper. The U.S. study blamed modern lifestyles for the problem, saying that spending time on a computer and texting prevents people from focusing and memorizing information.

According to Betsy Sparrow, search engines like Google change the way we memorize and remember things. Sparrow and her team tested how people remember information when such information is stored somewhere accessible, like, say, the Internet. Experts call this transactive memory, being able to remember where you can get the information and not the information itself. The results of the study were the way our brain saves data has changed because of the “confidence” we have to find them online. “We’re not thoughtless empty-headed people who don’t have memories anymore,” Sparrow said. “But we are becoming particularly adept at remembering where to go find things, And that’s kind of amazing.” The study began by gathering 60 students who were asked to type 40 pieces of trivia; some examples were “An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.”

Some students were told the information would be saved, and others were told it would be erased. To further the experiment, the participants were asked not only to remember the trivia statement itself but which of the five computer folders it was saved in. The research that was found from this showed students are “primed” to look to the Internet first for knowledge. Another experiment that was tested on 34 undergraduates in New York City showed that the students were able to remember where they stored that information better than they could remember the information themselves. “ it isn’t clear what the effects of being so wired will have on people over time.” Betsy Sparrow was very mind blown, “our brains rely on the internet for our memory in the same exact way our memory relies on a friend or a family member.”

Google’s Impact on Society and Interpersonal Relationships

Technology not only transforms societies, but it also changes social interactions and relationships between people. Technology, like Google, has had a huge effect on our society. Google has been a very great research tool, but it has made people very lazy and dependent on technology. The use of this technology affects our health. It first affects the way of thinking. In today’s world, people are not only found dependent on technology, they can also be dependent on it. The utilization of social media has shortened our attention span from 12 minutes in order to 5 minutes. People who’re online for about 5 hours each day have trouble remembering people’s names and, in many cases, their own birthdays. “Our world has begun to revolve around technological goods, and we are becoming so much tech-freak that our social communication has been seriously disturbed.” I believe the advancement of technology has negatively impacted our social interactions because it detaches us from what is happening around us. Society must be able to use technology while not allowing it to disrupt our social interactions. Data shows that those who use the Internet frequently spend over 100 minutes less time with friends and family than non-Internet users, according to Norman H. Nie and D. Sunshine Hillygus in their paper “The Impact of Internet Use on Sociability.” When our communication skills decrease, we begin “spending less time talking to families, experiencing more daily stress, and feeling more lonely and depressed,” writes Affonso.

A blog made by Tom Risen called “Is the Internet Bad for Society and Relationships?” They published a survey of about 1,000 adults about their views of how the Internet has had an impact on their lives. They were asked whether they thought the Internet was good or bad for society; 15% answered it was bad for society, 76% said it was good, and 8% were neutral. When the participants were asked if the Internet strengthened their relationships with family, 67% of Internet users said yes, 18 % said it weakens those relationships, 4% said both, and another 4% said neither.“I, too, see our relying on some kinds of outsourcing technology as both likely and helpful. But I also believe extreme dependency is a problem to be aware of” wrote Selinger. The constant switch from one task to another tires your brain out. The brain gets tired of the information, especially if the information is received chaotically. The brain takes time to “digest” the received data and to process this information. But instead of this, many people continue to stuff it with new information from social networks or the Internet, keeping away from resting.

References:

Gwinn, E. (2013). Overuse of Technology Can Lead to Digital Dementia. JoongAng Daily Newspaper.

Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776-778. DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745

Chatterjee, A., Bhanot, S., Frank, L. B., Murphy, S. T., & Power, G. (2009). Online Social Networks and Health. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 38(4), 438-441. DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2008.12.006

Nie, N. H., & Hillygus, D. S. (2002). The Impact of Internet Use on Sociability: Time-Diary Findings. IT & Society, 1(1), 1-20.

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nestle global strategy case study

Google Essay for Students and Teacher

500+ words essay on google.

Google is named after the mathematical word “googol,” described as the value represented by one followed by 100 zeros. Google is the leading Internet search engine; its main service provides customers with targeted search outcomes chosen from over 8 billion web pages. Both Stanford dropouts, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed Google search technology from a college project. Thus, an insight into Google Essay discusses how Google works and came into existence.

Google is undoubtedly today’s most famous and interesting business in the globe. It’s the mission, according to its corporate website, is to “organize the data of the world and make it widely available and helpful” (Google, 2010).

Google ranked first in the annual “Best companies” of Fortune Magazine, winning other top businesses in 2007 and 2008 for two successive years. His performance as a top employer is due to his inner corporate culture the most quoted reason. Google is the ultimate global company and is defined as a “fast-paced, high-energy working setting” (Google, 2010).

Because Google is focused on its “young” internet-savvy market, its employees ‘ average age is significantly smaller than most businesses. Google’s median age is 30 and the distribution of sex is 65% male and 35% female (Linkedin, 2010).

The dress code is “casual” and laid-back because it values skill and hard work, not appearance. Google has a very engaging culture of the business. Also, Google Mountain View’s headquarters, CA called Googleplex, is intended to have a “campus-like” feel in tune with its predominantly young new recruits at the college level (Google, 2010).

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Google and Rivals

Microsoft and Yahoo both invest strongly in search technology and gain market share on an ongoing basis. 2. With few rivals like Yahoo and MSN, Google operates in an oligopoly sector.

Thus, Google may find it hard to maintain its customers with low differentiation within the consequence of the search engine. Also, Yahoo and MSN launch their own search engines and targeted marketing systems; Google is in a race to create fresh search instruments to attract customers and grow their marketing networks.

Click fraud mentioned by Google as one of the potential “concerns” that may influence its income. In reality, due to click fraud, Google confessed to frequently paying refunds.

In reality, due to click fraud, Google confessed to frequently paying refunds. Click fraud happens when an individual, automated script or computer program imitates a lawful user of a web browser clicking on an advertisement in order to generate an inappropriate charge per click in the online pay-per-click advertisement.

For instance, Network click fraud-you are hosting ads on your own private website from Google AdSense. Google charges you each time you click on your website’s ad. Its fraud if you sit on the desktop constantly clicking on the ad or writing a computer program that clicks on the ad constantly. Such fraud is simple for Google to spot, so smart network click fraudsters simulate distinct IP addresses, or install Trojan horses on pcs from other people to produce fake clicks.

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How Has Google Affected The Way Students Learn?

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Take a look at this question: How do modern novels represent the characteristics of humanity?

If you were tasked with answering it, what would your first step be? Would you scribble down your thoughts — or would you Google it?

Terry Heick, a former English teacher in Kentucky, had a surprising revelation when his eighth- and ninth-grade students quickly turned to Google.

"What they would do is they would start Googling the question, 'How does a novel represent humanity?' " Heick says. "That was a real eye-opener to me."

For those of us who grew up with search engines, especially Google, at our fingertips — looking at all of you millennials and post-millennials — this might seem intuitive. We grew up having our questions instantly answered as long as we had access to the Internet.

Now, with the advent of personal assistants like Siri and Google Now that aim to serve up information before you even know you need it , you don't even need to type the questions. Just say the words and you'll have your answer.

But with so much information easily available, does it make us smarter? Compared to the generations before who had to adapt to the Internet, how are those who grew up using the Internet — the so-called "Google generation" — different?

Heick had intended for his students to take a moment to think, figure out what type of information they needed, how to evaluate the data and how to reconcile conflicting viewpoints. He did not intend for them to immediately Google the question, word by word — eliminating the process of critical thinking.

More Space To Think Or Less Time To Think?

There is a relative lack of research available examining the effect of search engines on our brains even as the technology is rapidly dominating our lives. Of the studies available, the answers are sometimes unclear.

Some argue that with easy access to information, we have more space in our brain to engage in creative activities, as humans have in the past.

Whenever new technology emerges — including newspapers and television — discussions about how it will threaten our brainpower always crops up, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in a 2010 op-ed in The New York Times. Instead of making us stupid, he wrote, the Internet and technology "are the only things that will keep us smart."

Daphne Bavelier , a professor at the University of Geneva, wrote in 2011 that we may have lost the ability for oral memorization valued by the Greeks when writing was invented, but we gained additional skills of reading and text analysis.

Writer Nicholas Carr contends that the Internet will take away our ability for contemplation due to the plasticity of our brains. He wrote about the subject in a 2008 article for The Atlantic titled " Is Google Making Us Stupid ."

"... what the [Internet] seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation," Carr wrote.

The few studies available, however, do not seem to bode well for the Google generation.

A 2008 study commissioned by the British Library found that young people go through information online very quickly without evaluating it for accuracy.

A 2011 study in the journal Science showed that when people know they have future access to information, they tend to have a better memory of how and where to find the information — instead of recalling the information itself.

That phenomenon is similar to not remembering your friend's birthday because you know you can find it on Facebook. When we know that we can access this information whenever we want, we are not motivated to remember it.

'I'm Always On My Computer'

Michele Nelson, an art teacher at Estes Hills Elementary School in Chapel Hill, N.C., seems to share Carr's concerns. Nelson, who has been teaching for more than nine years, says it was obvious with her middle school students and even her 15-year-old daughter that they are unable to read long texts anymore.

"They just had a really hard time comprehending if they went to a website that had a lot of information," Nelson says. "They couldn't grasp it, they couldn't figure out what the important thing was."

Nelson says she struggles with the same problem.

"I'm always on my computer. ... I don't read books as much as I used to," she says. "It's a lot harder for my brain to get to a place where I can follow and enjoy the reading, and I get distracted very easily."

The bright side lies in a 2009 study conducted by Gary Small, the director of University of California Los Angeles' Longevity Center , that explored brain activity when older adults used search engines. He found that among older people who have experience using the Internet, their brains are two times more active than those who don't when conducting Internet searches.

Internet searching, Small says, is like a brain exercise that can be good for our mental health.

"If somebody has normal memory when they're older, I always encourage them to use the computer," he says. "It enhances our lives."

For Small, the problem for younger people is the overuse of the technology that leads to distraction. Otherwise, he is excited for the new innovations in technology.

"We tend to be economical in terms of how we use our brain, so if you know you don't have to memorize the directions to a certain place because you have a GPS in your car, you're not going to bother with that," Small says. "You're going to use your mind to remember other kinds of information."

How To Teach Digital Natives?

Heick has since left teaching to start TeachThought , a company that produces content to support teachers in "innovation in teaching and learning for a 21st century audience."

To him, the Internet holds great potential for education — but curriculum must change accordingly. Since content is so readily available, teachers should not merely dole out information and instead focus on cultivating critical thinking, he says.

"Classroom walls and school building walls are transparent, with technology essentially bringing the outside world to the classroom and vice versa," he says.

Heick says his company recently started working with schools and organizations in a few states, including North Carolina, Texas and New York, to develop lesson plans.

"Google really lubricates that access to information and while that is fantastic, it makes us have to change a bit the way we think about things," Heick says. "Because we're so busy, we have this false security that we understand something because we Googled it. Now we're moving on to the next thing instead of really rolling around with this idea and trying to understand it."

One of his recommendations is to make questions "Google-proof."

"Design it so that Google is crucial to creating a response rather than finding one," he writes in his company's blog . "If students can Google answers — stumble on (what) you want them to remember in a few clicks — there's a problem with the instructional design."

Meanwhile, teenagers are also aware of how the Internet is taking ahold of their lives. Caitlyn Nelson, teacher Michele Nelson's daughter, finds it hard to focus when she is forced to do readings or even exams online. Like most teenagers, sometimes she finds herself surfing the Web when she's supposed to be reading PowerPoint slides in class.

Caitlyn talks about a video they watched in English class about the impact of technology.

"We talked about how technology is changing ... how most people are basically becoming zombies and slaves to the Internet because that's all we can do," she says.

"I feel really bad that I'm connected to my phone all the time instead of talking to my mom. But she's also addicted to her phone."

18 Google Scholar tips all students should know

Dec 13, 2022

[[read-time]] min read

Think of this guide as your personal research assistant.

“It’s hard to pick your favorite kid,” Anurag Acharya says when I ask him to talk about a favorite Google Scholar feature he’s worked on. “I work on product, engineering, operations, partnerships,” he says. He’s been doing it for 18 years, which as of this month, happens to be how long Google Scholar has been around.

Google Scholar is also one of Google’s longest-running services. The comprehensive database of research papers, legal cases and other scholarly publications was the fourth Search service Google launched, Anurag says. In honor of this very important tool’s 18th anniversary, I asked Anurag to share 18 things you can do in Google Scholar that you might have missed.

1. Copy article citations in the style of your choice.

With a simple click of the cite button (which sits below an article entry), Google Scholar will give you a ready-to-use citation for the article in five styles, including APA, MLA and Chicago. You can select and copy the one you prefer.

2. Dig deeper with related searches.

Google Scholar’s related searches can help you pinpoint your research; you’ll see them show up on a page in between article results. Anurag describes it like this: You start with a big topic — like “cancer” — and follow up with a related search like “lung cancer” or “colon cancer” to explore specific kinds of cancer.

Related searches can help you find what you’re looking for.

3. And don’t miss the related articles.

This is another great way to find more papers similar to one you found helpful — you can find this link right below an entry.

4. Read the papers you find.

Scholarly articles have long been available only by subscription. To keep you from having to log in every time you see a paper you’re interested in, Scholar works with libraries and publishers worldwide to integrate their subscriptions directly into its search results. Look for a link marked [PDF] or [HTML]. This also includes preprints and other free-to-read versions of papers.

5. Access Google Scholar tools from anywhere on the web with the Scholar Button browser extension.

The Scholar Button browser extension is sort of like a mini version of Scholar that can move around the web with you. If you’re searching for something, hitting the extension icon will show you studies about that topic, and if you’re reading a study, you can hit that same button to find a version you read, create a citation or to save it to your Scholar library.

Install the Scholar Button Chrome browser extension to access Google Scholar from anywhere on the web.

6. Learn more about authors through Scholar profiles.

There are many times when you’ll want to know more about the researchers behind the ideas you’re looking into. You can do this by clicking on an author’s name when it’s hyperlinked in a search result. You’ll find all of their work as well as co-authors, articles they’re cited in and so on. You can also follow authors from their Scholar profile to get email updates about their work, or about when and where their work is cited.

7. Easily find topic experts.

One last thing about author profiles: If there are topics listed below an author’s name on their profile, you can click on these areas of expertise and you’ll see a page of more authors who are researching and publishing on these topics, too.

8. Search for court opinions with the “Case law” button.

Scholar is the largest free database of U.S. court opinions. When you search for something using Google Scholar, you can select the “Case law” button below the search box to see legal cases your keywords are referenced in. You can read the opinions and a summary of what they established.

9. See how those court opinions have been cited.

If you want to better understand the impact of a particular piece of case law, you can select “How Cited,” which is below an entry, to see how and where the document has been cited. For example, here is the How Cited page for Marbury v. Madison , a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established that courts can strike down unconstitutional laws or statutes.

10. Understand how a legal opinion depends on another.

When you’re looking at how case laws are cited within Google Scholar, click on “Cited by” and check out the horizontal bars next to the different results. They indicate how relevant the cited opinion is in the court decision it’s cited within. You will see zero, one, two or three bars before each result. Those bars indicate the extent to which the new opinion depends on and refers to the cited case.

In the Cited by page for New York Times Company v. Sullivan, court cases with three bars next to their name heavily reference the original case. One bar indicates less reliance.

11. Sign up for Google Scholar alerts.

Want to stay up to date on a specific topic? Create an alert for a Google Scholar search for your topics and you’ll get email updates similar to Google Search alerts. Another way to keep up with research in your area is to follow new articles by leading researchers. Go to their profiles and click “Follow.” If you’re a junior grad student, you may consider following articles related to your advisor’s research topics, for instance.

12. Save interesting articles to your library.

It’s easy to go down fascinating rabbit hole after rabbit hole in Google Scholar. Don’t lose track of your research and use the save option that pops up under search results so articles will be in your library for later reading.

13. Keep your library organized with labels.

Labels aren’t only for Gmail! You can create labels within your Google Scholar library so you can keep your research organized. Click on “My library,” and then the “Manage labels…” option to create a new label.

14. If you’re a researcher, share your research with all your colleagues.

Many research funding agencies around the world now mandate that funded articles should become publicly free to read within a year of publication — or sooner. Scholar profiles list such articles to help researchers keep track of them and open up access to ones that are still locked down. That means you can immediately see what is currently available from researchers you’re interested in and how many of their papers will soon be publicly free to read.

15. Look through Scholar’s annual top publications and papers.

Every year, Google Scholar releases the top publications based on the most-cited papers. That list (available in 11 languages) will also take you to each publication’s top papers — this takes into account the “h index,” which measures how much impact an article has had. It’s an excellent place to start a research journey as well as get an idea about the ideas and discoveries researchers are currently focused on.

16. Get even more specific with Advanced Search.

Click on the hamburger icon on the upper left-hand corner and select Advanced Search to fine-tune your queries. For example, articles with exact words or a particular phrase in the title or articles from a particular journal and so on.

17. Find extra help on Google Scholar’s help page.

It might sound obvious, but there’s a wealth of useful information to be found here — like how often the database is updated, tips on formatting searches and how you can use your library subscriptions when you’re off-campus (looking at you, college students!). Oh, and you’ll even learn the origin of that quote on Google Scholar’s home page.

18. Keep up with Google Scholar news.

Don’t forget to check out the Google Scholar blog for updates on new features and tips for using this tool even better.

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• How Search Engines Work

How Search Engines Answer Questions

Got questions? Search engines have answers. But how? Learn how search engines understand and categorize queries to provide the best possible answer.

The primary goal of a search engine is to help users complete a task (and, of course, to sell advertising).

Sometimes that task can involve acquiring complex information. Sometimes the user simply needs a single answer to a question.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how search engines determine which category a query falls into and then how they determine the answer.

How Search Engines Qualify Query Types

Entire articles, or likely books, could be written on just this question alone.

But we’re going to try to summarize that all in a few hundred words.

Just to get it out of the way, RankBrain has little to no role here.

So what’s actually going on?

At its core, the first step in the process is to understand what information is being requested.

That is, classifying the query as a who, what, where, when, why or how query.

This classification can take place regardless of whether those specific words are included in the query as illustrated by:

So, what we see happening here is two things:

• Google has determined the user is looking for an answer to a question as the likely primary intent.
• Google has determined that if that is not the primary intent of the user, that the secondary intents are likely different.

You may be wondering how the search engines can determine that the user is asking a question in the second example above. It isn’t built into the query, after all.

And in the first example, how do they infer that the user is looking for information on the weather in their location as opposed to just in general.

There are a number of systems that connect and provide data to create this environment. At its core, it relies on the following:

Canonical Queries

We tend to think of a query as a single request with a single response. This is not the case.

When a query is run, if there is not a known-good likely intent or when the engine may want to test their assumptions, one of the methods they have at their disposal is the creation of canonical queries.

Google outlined the process in a patent granted in 2016 titled, “ Evaluating Semantic Interpretations Of A Search Query ” (link is to my analysis for easier reading).

In short, the problem is summarized in the following image:

One query with multiple possible meanings.

In the patent, they outline a process by which all possible interpretations could be used to produce a result. In short, they would produce a result set for all five queries.

They would compare the results from the queries 204a, 204b, 204c, and 204d with the results from 202. The one from the 204-series that most closely matches that from 202 would be considered the likely intent.

Judging from the current results, it seems 204c won:

Which would have required two rounds of this process.

The first to select movies, the second to select which movie.

And the less people that click on a search result from this page, the more successful the result would be considered which is outlined in the patent in the statement:

“Using search results to evaluate the different semantic interpretations, other data sources such as click-through data, user-specific data, and others that are utilized when producing the search results are taken into account without the need to perform additional analysis.”

Relative to the context of the patent, this is not saying CTR is a direct metric. In fact, this statement is more akin to what John Mueller meant when answered to a question about Google using user metrics:

“… that’s something we look at across millions of different queries, and millions of different pages, and kind of see in general is this algorithm going the right way or is this algorithm going in the right way.”

Basically, they don’t use it to just the success of a single result, they use them to judge the success of the SERPs (including layout) as a whole.

Neural Matching

Google uses neural matching to essentially determine synonyms.

Basically, neural matching is an AI-driven process that allows Google (in this case) to understand synonyms from a very high level.

To use their example, it allows Google to produce results like:

You can see that the query is for an answer to why my TV looks strange which the system recognized as a reference to the “soap opera effect.”

The ranking page doesn’t contain the word “strange.”

So much for keyword density.

Their AI systems are looking for synonyms at a very complex level to understand what information will address an intent, even when it’s not specifically requested.

Situational Similarities

There is a variety of examples and areas where situational context comes into play but at its core, we need to think of how query intent varies by situational conditions.

Above we mentioned a patent about systems that create canonical queries. Included in that patent is the idea of creating a template.

A template that could be used for other similar queries to start the process faster.

So, if it took resources to determine that when someone enters a single word that tends to have a broad context they likely want a definition, they can apply that more universally producing results like:

And from there begin looking for patterns of exceptions, like food.

And speaking of food, it serves as a great example supporting my belief (and I think logic) that it’s also very likely the engines use search volumes.

If more people search for restaurants than recipes for a term like “pizza”, I believe it’s safe to say they would use that as a metric and know if a food product doesn’t follow that pattern, then the template may not apply.

Building on templates, I believe it is very likely, if not certain, that seed sets of data are used.

Scenarios where the engines train systems based on real-world understanding of what people want, programmed by engineers, and templates are generated.

Dave sat down at the Googleplex, wanted some pizza, Googled [pizza], got a top 10 list, thought, “ that’s silly,” and started working with the team on a template.

I haven’t actually read anything about seed sets in this context, but it makes sense and most certainly exists.

Past Interactions

The search engines will test whether their understanding of an intent is correct by placing a result within an applicable layout and seeing what users do.

In our context above, if a possible intent of the query “what’s the weather like” is that I’m looking for an answer to a question, they will test that assumption.

It seems that on a large scale, it’s an answer people want.

So, What Does This Have to Do with Answering Questions?

Great question.

To understand how Google answers questions we needed to first understand how they can pull together the data to understand whether a query is a question.

Sure, it’s easy when it’s a who, what, where, when, why or how query.

But we need to think about how they know that a query like “weather” or “meme” is a query for a specific piece of information.

It is a Five Ws query without any Ws (or an H for that matter).

Once that is established using an interconnectedness of the techniques discussed above combined (and I’m sure a few I’ve missed), all that’s left is to find the answer.

So a user has entered a single word and the engine has jumped through its many hoops to establish that it is likely a request for a specific answer. They are now left to determine what that answer is.

For that, I’d recommend you start by reading  what John Mueller has to say about featured snippets and work your way forward as applicable to your business.

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita Screenshots taken by author

Dave Davies co-founded Beanstalk Internet Marketing with his wife Mary in 2004. He is the Lead SEO for Weights & ...

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Essay on Google

There was a time when we had to struggle hard to find answers to any typical question. One option was considering books. Can you imagine how difficult it was to read several books just to find answers to some simple questions? Another option was to collect information from people. This was also very annoying and time consuming.

Then came the era of the Internet, which made our life as simple as we can imagine. After the introduction of the internet, the term “Google” became the solution to every problem. All we need to do is search Google and all our problems will be solved in a few seconds.

10 Lines Essay on Google

1) Google is a top-ranked search engine in the world.

2) Google was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

3) The development was started in 1996 however; the company was officially incorporated on 4 September 1998.

4) The developers initially named Google ‘BackRub’.

5) The name Google was adopted from the word Googol (1 followed by 100 zeroes).

6) Google provides a wide variety of features that help us to stay connected with society.

7) Advertising is a major source of revenue for Google.

8) YouTube, Gmail, Drive are some products of Google.

9) The Page Rank algorithm of Google differentiates it from other search engines.

10) Sunder Pichai is the current CEO of Google.

Long Essay on Google in English

Here, I’m presenting an essay on Google. Every human is well aware of this term but to know the detailed information about this topic you need to go through this essay.

900 Words Essay – Google

Introduction

Many of us are unaware of the wide variety of services offered by Google. However, most of the Google Applications are designed according to users’ needs. This is the major reason Google is ranked as the best company in magazines. They always try to customize their services by keeping users’ requirements as their center.

Google- The Era Of Simplification

Google is a multinational company that provides various internet-based services to customers. It is counted among the top five information technology industries of the world. Although the company is most popular as a search engine. As a search engine, the main motive of Google is to provide the most relevant results of the search. It is the most famous search engine in the world.

The term Google became very popular and significant that it can also be used as a verb. The main aim of Google is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Searching and accessing this information is much easier, only one needs to have an Internet connection. Google makes a huge amount of revenue by advertising.

Evolution Of Google

In 1996, two students of Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started developing Google as a research project.

They named the new search engine “BackRub”. The concept of page rank influenced the market. Afterward, they changed the name to Google, which was inspired by the term “Googol” meaning 1 followed by 100 zeroes. They used this term to signify that the large number of information will be provided by the search engine.

 On 15 th September 1997, the Google domain www.google.com was registered. And on 4 th September 1998, the company was officially incorporated. In 2015 Google changed his name to Alphabet.inc which is working as a parent company for Google and its subsidiaries.

In 2001, Eric Schmidt was appointed as the CEO of Google by Brin and Larry Page. In 2015, Sunder Pichai was appointed as the new CEO of Google replacing Larry Page, who is now the CEO of Alphabet.

Features/ Applications Of Google

A wide variety of applications is provided by Google. Some of them are listed below:

• Stay Connected And Updated: Today we can stay connected and updated with society with the help of various features of Google. Any news related to the business market, world news, political issues, etc can be accessed easily using Google. However, it also keeps us updated with the news related to the entertainment industry.
• Get Everything Just By Asking: With the new feature of Google, we need not search everything just by typing. Instead, we can search just by speaking. It is the fastest way of searching.
• Travel Anywhere: Some services like Google Maps allow us to travel anywhere carefree. We need not worry about directions. It also updates us with the traffic. A complete traveling guide is provided by Google.
• Shopping At Fingertip: Apart from shopping online, it also provides the details of the shopping. Tracking your orders, paying the bill online, etc can be done easily. Worries related to bookings are far apart with the emergence of Google. 

Products And Services Of Google

Google offers more than 50 internet services today. It provides many other services but the most popular service is a search engine. Due to which most people know its existence. Some of the most popular products and services of Google are as follows:

• Google Search Engine: The famous service provided by Google is the search engine. It is one of the most widely used search engines in the world. It is available in about 149 languages. The main motive is to provide the users with their search results.
• YouTube: YouTube is owned by Google and is the second most visited website in the world. It is a social media platform developed on 14 February 2015. It allows users to share videos over this platform.
• Google Drive: The Google Drive was developed on 24 April 2012 by Google. It is a file storing and synchronizing service with billions of active users. It offers users 15 Gb of free storage however it does have paid plans for 100 GB, 200 GB, or 2 TB storage.
• Google Chrome: Google Chrome was developed in 2008 by Google. It is a web browser initially developed for Microsoft windows. Web browsers are used to access the world wide web. It is one of the best browsers which provide safe and secure browsing.
• Gmail: The most popular free email service provided by Google is Gmail. It has more than 1.5 billion active users today. It was developed on 1 April 2004, which is now available in about 104 languages. It also provides high storage capacity.

What Made Google Unique From Other Search Engines?

The technique to sort the searched results made Google unique from the traditional search engines.

Google uses a different method of organizing the page. Other search engines rank the results according to the number of times the searched word is mentioned on the page. But the Google search engine introduced another algorithm known as “PageRank” or (PR). According to this, the results are ranked according to the total number of pages linked to it.

This algorithm provides better results and hence helped Google to become the top search engine in the world.

Google is a fast-growing organization that left its competitors behind. Yahoo and Microsoft are the most famous rivals of Google. Not once but twice, Yahoo refused to accept Google as it wanted to expand its own business. Yahoo failed to compete in the market which resulted in a complete shutdown. In most mobile phones especially in India, Google apps are added as inbuilt.

I hope the above given essay on Google would be helpful for you to increase your knowledge.

Read also :

• Essay on Blockchain
• Essay on Internet of Things (IoT)
• Essay on Hyperloop

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions on Google

Ans. Google Pixel is the first Google-branded phone.

Ans. The headquarter of Google is located in Mountain View, California.

Ans. Craig Silverstein, Stanford’s Ph.D. student, was appointed as the first employee in Google  as the Director of Technology.

Ans. Eric Schmidt was the first CEO of Google.

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Google — Benefits And Drawbacks Of Google Search

Benefits and Drawbacks of Google Search

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Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 997 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited:

• Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 6-22. (2019). Army leadership and the profession. Headquarters, Department of the Army.
• Ferrell, R. S. (2016). What does it take to be a good Army leader? Army Magazine, 66(6), 44-46.
• Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2019). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Cengage Learning.
• Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
• O'Reilly, C. A., & Chatman, J. A. (2011). Leadership and culture: An integrated approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 713-731.
• Powell, G. N. (2018). Women and leadership. Oxford University Press.
• Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and research. Free Press.
• Van Velsor, E., McCauley, C. D., & Ruderman, M. N. (2010). The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development. John Wiley & Sons.
• Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations. Pearson.
• Zaccaro, S. J. (2007). Trait-based perspectives of leadership. American psychologist, 62(1), 6-16.

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University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law

Searching for an answer: can google legally manipulate search engine results, publication date, document type, repository citation.

Tansy Woan, Searching for an Answer: Can Google Legally Manipulate Search Engine Results? , 16 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 294 (2013). Available at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jbl/vol16/iss1/5

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Can Google Give A.I. Answers Without Breaking the Web?

Publishers have long worried that artificial intelligence would drive readers away from their sites. They’re about to find out if those fears are warranted.

• Share full article

By Kevin Roose

Reporting from San Francisco

For the past year and a half since ChatGPT was released, a scary question has hovered over the heads of major online publishers: What if Google decides to overhaul its core search engine to feature generative artificial intelligence more prominently — and breaks our business in the process?

The question speaks to one of the most fragile dependencies in today’s online media ecosystem.

Most big publishers, including The New York Times, receive a significant chunk of traffic from people going to Google, searching for something and clicking on articles about it. That traffic, in turn, allows publishers to sell ads and subscriptions, which pay for the next wave of articles, which Google can then show to people who go searching for the next thing.

The whole symbiotic cycle has worked out fine, more or less, for a decade or two. And even when Google announced its first generative A.I. chatbot, Bard , last year, some online media executives consoled themselves with the thought that Google wouldn’t possibly put such an erratic and unproven technology into its search engine, or risk mucking up its lucrative search ads business, which generated $175 billion in revenue last year.

But change is coming.

At its annual developer conference on Tuesday, Google announced that it would start showing A.I.-generated answers — which it calls “A.I. overviews” — to hundreds of millions of users in the United States this week. More than a billion users will get them by the end of the year, the company said.

The answers, which are powered by Google’s Gemini A.I. technology , will appear at the top of the search results page when users search for things like “vegetarian meal prep options” or “day trips in Miami.” They’ll give users concise summaries of whatever they’re looking for, along with suggested follow-up questions and a list of links they can click on to learn more. (Users will still get traditional search results, too, but they’ll have to scroll farther down the page to see them.)

The addition of these answers is the biggest change that Google has made to its core search results page in years, and one that stems from the company’s fixation on shoving generative A.I. into as many of its products as possible. It may also be a popular feature with users — I’ve been testing A.I. overviews for months through Google’s Search Labs program, and have generally found them to be useful and accurate.

But publishers are right to be spooked. If the A.I. answer engine does its job well enough, users won’t need to click on any links at all. Whatever they’re looking for will be sitting right there, on top of their search results. And the grand bargain on which Google’s relationship with the open web rests — you give us articles, we give you traffic — could fall apart.

Google executives put a positive spin on the announcement on Tuesday, saying that the new A.I. overviews would improve the user experience by “taking the legwork out of searching.”

But that legwork pays for a lot of journalism, and a lot of other types of online media (fashion blogs, laptop reviews, restaurant listings) without which the internet would be far less useful. If Google’s A.I. overviews starve these websites of traffic, what will happen to them? And if big chunks of the web were to vanish altogether, what would be left for the A.I. to summarize?

Google clearly anticipated these fears, and its executives had responses prepared.

In a briefing this week ahead of Google’s developer conference, they said that the company’s tests had found that users who were shown A.I. overviews tended to conduct more searches, and visited a more diverse set of websites. They also said that the links that appeared in A.I. overviews got more clicks than the links that were displayed on traditional search results pages.

Liz Reid, the vice president of search at Google, said in a blog post on Tuesday that the company would “continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”

But parse these responses carefully and you’ll see that Google is not saying that publishers’ overall search traffic won’t decline. That’s because Google can’t really predict what will happen once it starts showing A.I.-generated overviews in billions of search results a day, and how users’ behavior may change as a result.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Perplexity , an A.I.-powered “answer engine” that shows users a concise summary of a topic they’re researching rather than handing them a list of websites to visit. The experience, I believed, was clearly better than a traditional search engine for some types of searches, and usually gave me more useful information faster.

But I was also nervous, because during my own testing of Perplexity, I basically stopped clicking any links at all. In a world where A.I. can browse the internet for me and paraphrase what it sees, I found that I just didn’t need them. And I worried about what would happen if Perplexity users were all like me and got in the habit of relying on A.I.-generated summaries rather than on original sources.

I have the same concerns about Google’s new A.I. overviews, but on a vastly different scale.

Perplexity is tiny — just 10 million monthly users, as of February. Google, by contrast, has billions of users and represents more than 90 percent of the global search market. If it makes a change to its search engine that reduces outgoing traffic by just a few percentage points, every publisher will feel it.

It’s unclear how big the effects of Google’s A.I. overviews will ultimately be. One analyst firm, Gartner, has predicted that traffic to the web from search engines could fall by 25 percent by 2026. And many publishers are bracing for double-digit declines in traffic this year.

Maybe these fears are overblown, and publishers have been worrying over nothing. But after Tuesday’s announcement, Google has made it clear that they’re about to find out either way.

Kevin Roose is a Times technology columnist and a host of the podcast " Hard Fork ." More about Kevin Roose

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the company .

OpenAI has unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot  that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos.

A bipartisan group of senators released a long-awaited legislative plan for A.I. , calling for billions in funding to propel U.S. leadership in the technology while offering few details on regulations.

The Age of A.I.

D’Youville University in Buffalo had an A.I. robot speak at its commencement . Not everyone was happy about it.

A new program, backed by Cornell Tech, M.I.T. and U.C.L.A., helps prepare lower-income, Latina and Black female computing majors  for A.I. careers.

Publishers have long worried that A.I.-generated answers on Google would drive readers away from their sites. They’re about to find out if those fears are warranted, our tech columnist writes .

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I.  But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

Google search is changing, it will soon show AI-generated answers

Sophie Atkinson is a UK-based journalist and content writer, as well as a founder of a content agency which focuses on storytelling through social media…

Sam Shedden is an experienced journalist and editor with over a decade of experience in online news. A seasoned technology writer and content strategist, he…

• Google unveils AI-powered changes at its annual I/O conference, shifting from traditional search.
• The new features include AI Overviews for quick answers, personalized search adjustments, and AI-organized results pages for easy exploration.
• Users can now plan events, brainstorm ideas, and even ask questions through video search.

‘Let Google do the searching for you’ is the expression the search engine is running with after it has shaken up its tried-and-true search format.

On Tuesday (May 14) the company formally announced the AI-powered changes at I/O, Google’s annual conference for developers.

Instead of Google being the go-to for finding the most relevant websites and resources for searches, the search engine will now provide direct answers, help brainstorm ideas, and even plan events.

The announcement of the major change comes just a day after rivals OpenAI released its GPT-4o model.

Although the CEO Sam Altman has denied rumors about a search engine being rolled out with the new technology, the lead-up was filled with speculation.

While Google was once in a league of its own, it’s fair to say that OpenAI is quick on its tail offering intense competition.

Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search , explains the introduction of AI: “Over the past 25 years, across many technological shifts, we’ve continued to reimagine and expand what Google Search can do.

“We’ve meticulously honed our core information quality systems to help you find the best of what’s on the web. And we’ve built a knowledge base of billions of facts about people, places, and things – all so you can get information you can trust in the blink of an eye.”

The generative AI introduction means you can input searches in the same way, but Google will now do the legwork. This is done through a new Gemini model that has been customized for the searching feature.

While the team behind the product are understandably singing its praises, it’s leaving some with concerns.

Many businesses worldwide rely on search traffic to help their work be discovered, journalism funded, and advertisers enticed.

There’s a huge community of bloggers, journalists, and content creators whose main revenue stream comes from search engines propelling their sites to the top of results. This leads to more clicks, brand awareness, and increased advertiser pay outs in response to their work.

While individuals may reap the benefits of AI features, the slow loss of human elements could be detrimental to businesses.

Features of the new Google Search

The first change you’ll notice is the ‘AI Overviews’ feature which is now being rolled out to everyone in the United States. They say more countries will be able to access this soon.

The overviews section provides a quick answer to your search, along with links to learn more.

In time, the AI Overview tool can be adjusted if you’re looking for more simplified language or child-friendly answers to satisfy curiosity.

A ‘Plan Ahead’ element has been incorporated into Google search too, so if you ask for a 3-day meal plan it will create this for you.

Then, one of the most substantial changes is the completely AI-organized results page. Every item that pops up once the search button is clicked will be generated by artificial intelligence to make “it easy to explore.”

This will start with searches that are looking for inspiration, whether that’s for new movie suggestions or dining and recipe help.

If words aren’t your thing, you’ll soon be able to ask Google your search query through video too.

This will be available soon for Search Labs users in English in the U.S., with expansion into more regions over time.

Featured Image: Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Sophie Atkinson Tech Journalist

Sophie Atkinson is a UK-based journalist and content writer, as well as a founder of a content agency which focuses on storytelling through social media marketing. She kicked off her career with a Print Futures Award which champions young talent working in print, paper and publishing. Heading straight into a regional newsroom, after graduating with a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism, Sophie started by working for Reach PLC. Now, with five years experience in journalism and many more in content marketing, Sophie works as a freelance writer and marketer. Her areas of specialty span a wide range, including technology, business,…

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Google pitches its vision for AI everywhere, from search to your phone

At the company’s annual I/O developer conference, executives announced AI improvements to Android, work apps and its Gemini chatbot.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In speeches and demonstrations at the company’s annual developer conference on Tuesday, Google executives showed off a vision for its future, where artificial intelligence helps people work, plan their lives, navigate the physical world and get answers to questions directly. It would change the way the internet works forever.

In the biggest overhaul to Google’s search engine in years, the company said it will roll out AI-generated answers to the top of everyone’s search results in the United States this week, and to a billion of its worldwide users by the end of the year.

It also pushed its new and improved voice assistant that can answer questions more skillfully than before. Instead of connecting people to the broader web, Google’s AI will now do the reading and researching for them, summarizing websites, videos and social media posts into “overviews” that include everything they need to know on any given topic.

“Google will do the searching, the researching, the planning, the brainstorming and so much more. All you need to do is just ask,” Elizabeth Reid, Google’s head of search, said onstage.

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In one example, an executive asked Google’s Gemini assistant to plan a trip to Miami for her and her family. The AI searched the internet, reading reviews and travel guides written by humans, and put together an itinerary. The company showed off dozens more examples, from helping people learn how to flirt, to giving a suggestion for a last-minute gift.

The tsunami of new AI features come as the tech giant has thrown tens of billions of dollars into building AI tools to respond to competition from Meta, Microsoft, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and a host of up-and-coming AI start-ups. AI features will prominently be displayed across Google’s products, including Google Docs, Google Photos, Gmail and YouTube.

Google researchers invented many of the core technologies that kicked off the AI arms race, but over the past year the company has been on its back foot, with many in the industry seeing its tech as lagging behind that of OpenAI. On Tuesday, the company sought to prove it is still the king of the AI world, showing off improvements to its core AI model, which it calls Gemini.

Outside the conference, which takes place at an open-air amphitheater near Google’s headquarters, pro-Palestinian protesters gathered to demand the company end its work with Israel’s government and military. In April, Google fired 50 workers for holding sit-ins at the company’s offices to protest its contract with Israel.

Here are the biggest announcements from the company.

AI answers take over search

Google is making the biggest changes to its search engine since it launched its core product over 20 years ago. Now, instead of showing links to other sites or snippets of those sites at the top of search results, the company will use AI to summarize websites and provide multi-paragraph answers to search queries.

The changes have been in public testing for a year, but this week Google confirmed that it would aggressively push it to its hundreds of millions of users in the United States and further abroad, whether they want to use it or not. The changes are part of a broader vision outlined by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in which Google will be the central hub of how information is accessed for everyone. The company will ingest social media comments, online videos and news articles and remix the information using AI, spitting it out again in whatever format its users want.

Publishers are warning the changes could devastate their businesses , as more people find their answers directly on Google and don’t click through to the source of the information. Google says it doesn’t want to damage the open web and that it is still prioritizing sending traffic to websites. Users can’t turn off the AI answers, even if they want to.

AI is still far from ready to answer every question well. Even Google’s slick, highly-produced promotional video had an error where it instructed someone to fix a camera in a way that would expose and damage the film.

Google’s AI bot Gemini gets smarter

Google’s flagship AI model — its answer to OpenAI’s GPT4 — is called Gemini. The company demonstrated its capabilities, like showing it a bookshelf through a phone camera and getting it to quickly make a spreadsheet of all the books and their authors. In briefings before the event, Google showed a video of an employee walking through an office with a phone camera open, asking Gemini questions. The AI analyzed computer code on a workstation monitor, looked out the window and identified the neighborhood the person was in and even made up a clever name for a band consisting of the office golden retriever and a stuffed tiger toy — “Golden Stripes.”

The improved version of Gemini is available to all developers around the world, and to consumers who pay for an advanced version of Google’s AI app.

The day before, OpenAI had showed off a similar tool, asking its own AI chatbot to describe a room and the activities of the people in it.

Google also said that Gemini could now take in more complex instructions. For example, a student could upload an entire thesis paper and ask for feedback or ideas on how to change it.

Google’s head of AI, Demis Hassabis, also teased the company’s Project Astra. It is Google’s effort to build an AI “agent” that could do tasks for people by navigating the web on its own. Theoretically, AI agents could do things like book dentist appointments, communicate with colleagues on your behalf, and research places to eat and make a reservation.

A new AI video tool, Veo

Generative AI companies, including Google, want to revolutionize the way people create visual images, audio and movies. At I/O, Google announced a new video-generating AI tool called Veo, which aims to compete with OpenAI’s Sora . Veo generates high definition videos that can be longer than a minute, a threshold Google had yet to achieve.

Before the big speeches, DJ Marc Rebillet tried to warm up the crowd by making beats using Google’s AI tools. Rebillet bounced around the stage yelling “Google” over and over again. Google said it is working with creators including Rebillet, musician Wyclef Jean, and actor and producer Donald Glover on AI creations.

Google also showed off a new image-generation AI tool called Imagen 3, meant to compete with OpenAI’s Dall-E 3. The tech allows people to generate realistic-looking images with text prompts.

Work apps get even more AI

Google has been putting AI features into its suite of productivity apps including Gmail, Docs, Drives and Sheets over the past year. At I/O, the company announced some new tweaks, allowing users to summarize groups of emails from the same sender, adding details from a Google Doc in an email or incorporating content from a spreadsheet into a Slides presentation.

The company will also begin letting people ask Google’s AI to find specific details in a document and add them to an email. Google’s “help me write” feature, which generates text from scratch, will also soon be available in Spanish and Portuguese.

Google showed how its Gemini AI tool can also be used to teach kids about new concepts, asking it to explain the physics behind how a basketball rolls and bounces.

Android wants to catch scam calls

Google owns the Android smartphone operating system, which runs on the majority of phones worldwide. The company is trying to make Android more appealing than Apple’s iOS by putting more AI into the operating system itself. One improved feature, called Circle to Search, allows a person to circle anything they have a question about or want more information on and immediately get search results. The user can also generate images for text messages by asking Gemini.

Gemini can also help users get information from videos and PDFs. While they’re watching a video, for example, they can ask a specific question about something that happened in it. When they ask a question about a PDF, it’ll refer users to the part of the PDF where it found the answer.

Scam calls have become an even bigger problem as AI voice generators allow fraudsters to mimic real people. Android previewed a feature that will listen to and interrupt calls with a notification to the user if it thinks the call is coming from a scammer, such as if the caller asks for bank account information.

In a previous version of this article, the caption for the top photograph incorrectly said it was of the 2023 I/O conference. The photograph was taken Tuesday. The caption has been corrected.

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