10 interesting Google products you don’t know about
Google has so many different products that it becomes pretty hard to keep track of them over time. Some are worth being reminded of, though, because there are several useful Google products that are flying below the radar, unknown to the vast majority of users out there.
How do we know this? A couple of weeks ago we here at Pingdom wrote about Google’s tendency to keep many of its products in perpetual beta, and while doing the research for that post we kept finding Google products that we either didn’t know about or had forgotten that they existed.
So, we decided to share these with you.
This post lists 10 interesting Google products that you are likely to either have forgotten about or simply never knew existed.
Google Mobilizer
Via the Google Mobilizer page you can make any Web page mobile-friendly.
Audio Ads
A radio advertising program available through the AdWords interface. It reaches 1,600 FM and AM radio stations in the US.
Mashup Editor
An editor incorporating syntax highlighting and debugging for creating Web mashups and simple applications.
Ride Finder
A taxi, limousine and shuttle search service that uses the real-time position of vehicles in 14 US cities. It uses the Google Maps interface and any car service that wishes to participate.
Accessible Search
A specialized search engine for the blind and visually impaired that prioritizes accessible web sites.
Movies
A specialized search engine for finding film show times near a user-defined location as well as film reviews compiled from several different sources.
SMS
A text messaging service that Google offers in several countries, including the US, Japan, Canada, India and China. It lets you send search queries and receive results via SMS.
Gapminder
An online application for viewing data trends for countries and geographic regions in an interactive, visual manner.
Special Searches
Search within these special topics: Linux, BSD, Apple Macintosh, Microsoft, or the US Government.
GOOG-411
Google’s directory assistance service, available free of charge from any telephone in the US and Canada.
These products are just the tip of the iceberg. You can view a list of Google’s regular products here and Google Labs products here, and then there’s the list of Google products on Wikipedia to round things off. Happy browsing, there’s a LOT to go through!
The question is if even Sergey Brin and Larry Page are able to keep track of all the Google products out there…
Any other cool or useful, almost unknown Google products that you like but we didn’t include here? Let us know in the comments! 
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Ester G
October 15th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Nice list!
But I must admit that the Gapminder app is a bit confusing to me. Ok, confusing as hell!
Very different interface.
Bommar
October 15th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I remember hearing about that mobilizer service but forgot to check it out at the time. Time for another try. Might be useful.
Thanks for sharing.
Corpus
October 15th, 2008 at 7:34 am
This one is pretty cool too, and quite new I think:
http://labs.google.com/gaudi
Search Youtube for words
Pingdom
October 15th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Thanks for the comments so far.
@Ester: Yeah, it is a bit confusing to use, isn’t it? They have a blog for it that may be of help, and there’s supposed to be an instruction video somewhere on the site as well. Here’s the blog:
http://www.gapminder.org/world/blog/
@Corpus: That one must be brand new. Cool!
iGameroli
October 15th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Hey, not a bad list at all! I like, I like!
Argus McSheep
October 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am
What about Google Image Labeler?
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/
George
October 17th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Gapminder was pretty cool. At first it seemed a bit confusing
George
October 17th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Mean to say, it seemed confusing at first but once you get the hang of it it makes sense.
The graph has a dropdown menu on the x and y axis. This lets you customize what each axis represents. So you can, for example, arrange the circles from lowest to highest literacy going left to right with the bottom dropdown menu and arrange them from lowest to highest life expectancy along the y axis using the dropdown on the left of the graph.
The colors represent another data point (which can be changed from the top right dropdown which shows the map by default) and the size of the circles represent a fourth data point (population by default) which can be changed from the bottom right.
JayFrom1800Free411
October 17th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Just to let you know, that Google 411 number only works for businesses. To get business, gov’t, and residential listings, you’ll have to call 1-800-FREE411. That number also works for getting driving directions texted to your cell.
Cheers,
Jay
The =Q=
November 21st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
8004464411 Free Google 411. I LOVE this service… use it all the time instead of paying my phone company $3 for getting a number and writing it down the dialing it again. Google 411 says the number then connects you to it. Of course, you have to hear a short advertisement but that’s no big deal since it’s only like 10 seconds.