There is other big news this week besides the Facebook IPO. Internet behemoth Google announced on Wednesday that it had increased its search service. Knowledge Graph, the next generation for search on Google has been anticipated for months in high-tech circles. The new search options will be available during the week and are similar to the Timeline feature on Facebook.
The new features on Google are Wikipedia-like and are being released ahead of the IPO from Facebook, which analysts expect will raise over $18 billion for the Internet giant, making the social networking business worth close to $100 billion.
Microsoft also is making over its search engine Bing and has started to preview some of its new features. A tech analyst familiar with Google’s new changes, said search engines are now presenting more structured data in their search results. The new features have raised concerns that the layout of Google will be cluttered, said the analyst.
There is a worry that the page will become too bloated, making to not as mobile. The revamped search by Google allows consumers to sift through rich visual results. One sample search for Kings, resulted in a box on the right half of the screen with a number of brief summaries of the basketball team the Sacramento Kings and the hockey team the Los Angeles Kings, as well as the TV series Kings on NBC. Once you click on each, more data is given including websites.
A Frank Lloyd Wright search yielded a bio box containing his date of birth, education and projects he designed. The search results are more intuitive and consistent with effort from Google to deliver answers instead of links.
