Google has introduced what they call “Web Elements,” which let users add their favorite Google products to their website. The company spins it as a way for AdSense publishers to “spice up their site” and help increase their revenue. This was first announced back at the Google Developer Conference.
“Web Elements let you easily add richness and interactivity to your site simply by copying and pasting a snippet of code,” explains Christine Tsai of the Google Web Elements Team. “Inspired by the convenience of embeddable YouTube videos, each Web Element is built upon existing Google products.”
Users can remind visitors to their site of important dates by adding the Google Calendar element. They can let visitors post comments with the Conversation element. They can add a custom search element, a Google Maps element, a Google News element, a presentations element, a spreadsheet element, or the interesting YouTube News element, which shows news videos from YouTube.
Google has been all about some data portability lately, introducing their Data Liberation Front. That was all about being able to take your data in and out of Google Products. This is a different kind of data portability. This lets you take data from Google products and take it anywhere with you on the web.
Google shows some examples of sites that are already using Web Elements in this blog post. To use them yourself, simply go to google.com/webelements, choose your element, and copy/paste the code into the source code of your own site. It’s as simple as that.
All of the web elements are powered by Google’s developer APIs, so they can all be customized.
