Google Search for tablets

As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets. We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.

For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.

This improved search experience is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages. Give it a try by going to www.google.com in your tablet’s browser.

Google Goggles with new look and Russian

Some of you may already be using the new optical character recognition (OCR) and translation of Russian in Google Goggles that we previewed at last week’s Inside Search event. Starting today, we’re pleased to introduce some additional new features, including a map view of your Search History and the ability to copy contact and text results to the clipboard. We’ve also changed the results interface to make it easier to view and navigate through your results.

Russian optical character recognition (OCR) and translation
Since Google Goggles first launched in 2009, it has been able to recognize and translate text in a number of different languages, as long as the language used Latin characters. With the launch of OCR for Russian, Goggles is now able to read Cyrillic characters. Goggles will recognize a picture of Russian text and allow you to translate the text into one of over 40 other languages. Russian OCR is also available for users of Google Goggles on the Google Search app for iOS. Очень полезно!

You can take a picture of Russian text and translate it into over 40 languages.

Map view of your search history
If you’ve enabled search history on Goggles, your history contains a list of all the images that you’ve searched for, as well as some information about where you performed the search if you chose to share your location with Google. Sometimes this can be a pretty long list, so we wanted to give you another way to sort and visualize your Goggles results.

We’ve added a map view, which shows your Goggles image search history on a map so you can quickly zoom and pan to find a query from a particular location.

Easily toggle between map view and list view with the button in the upper right.

Copy contact and text results to clipboard
Finally, imagine that you wanted to grab a URL or telephone number from a sign and email it to yourself. Now, Goggles gives you the option of copying the recognized text to your phone’s clipboard, allowing you to paste the test into a number of applications.

To try these new features download Google Goggles 1.5 from Android Market, or scan the QR code below with your phone.

 

New Look for Google Places and Maps

 

Google, in anticipation of their coming Google+ social product, rolled out a new interface across most if not all of their products including Google Maps, Google Places, the Place Pages AND the mobile interface. The change, first spotted last weekend, adds a sharp, modern and one might even say a designed look to the UI. While the UI is a significant change, it is but a prelude and perhaps foundational change to Google’s forthcoming effort to “socialize” all of their products with the new Google+.

You will notice in my screen shot, the integration of Google+ along with the many other changes to the interface:

The Places page has a similar look but the outcome, because of the start contrasts and additional whitespace is more striking. Although it does seem that there might be more ads than previously. They are certainly more noticeable:

The new One Box display, rolled out last week, makes more visual sense when viewed in the context of the new interface as well:

Here is a screen shot of the blended results in the new layout. Like the One Box, the recent changes were obviously made with this UI update in mind. Although even here, with the pins and the Map, the users eye is still drawn away from the search results towards the array of Google products, the new (bright red) social function and the user photo at the top of the screen: