The Google Co-op offers a handful of nifty little tools that can provide you with all sorts of useful information (from the time, to the traffic, to the weather, and so on). But a recent upgrade allows users to “have live data included in your Google searches.”
Mashable’s Kristen Nicole broke the news, and noted that “[c]ertain keyword commands operate in a similar manner to syndicated Google gadgets, but will allow user preferences to be specified as a function of the query. This makes it easier for users to remember, and will also capture their attention; this is something developers should remember when submitting their Google gadget to the directory.”
But the last half of that sentence leads into a small problems with Google’s gadgets – at the moment, there just aren’t that many of them. Nicole thinks the new “embeddable” ability “offers a large potential for increased integration of Google’s front page and usefulness of its gadgets.”
Steve Rubel also noted the limited availability of gadgets, and, like Nicole, thinks the latest upgrade is “an important development.” But as he continues, he writes, “[O]ne wonders if Google will eventually rolling [sic] this all up into their new universal search and ‘widgetsense.’ As you look down the road, you can see this as an avenue to deliver one heckuva an opt-in online ad. The key is that the information delivered must be compelling enough.”
On one last, pretty much unrelated, note, both Nicole and Rubel drop the hyphen from the word “co-op.” I’m not sure if this is some grammatical convention I missed out on, but, hey, at least it provided me with a pun for the title.
