“With more features in the Knowledge Graph and more languages, with conversational voice search and hot-wording coming to Chrome on desktops and laptops, and with new Now functionality like reminders….search is becoming a really beautiful and ubiquitous experience that intelligently answers your questions and assists you throughout the day across all screens.”

That’s how Google Fellow Amit Singhal summed up the evolving search experience at today’s Google I/O event. Here’s more about the latest features:

• Google’s Knowledge Graph, now some 570 million entities strong and growing, is taking it to the stats. Now, users will get important stats powered by the Knolwedge Graph, he said. “Already you can find answers to questions like what is the population of India,” he told the audience, “but starting today we will anticipate your next question,” which may be how that population compares to the population of other countries. So, you’ll get the answer alongside the trends line and see all that in comparison to the population of the two countries whose population is most often compared to India, China and the U.S. Google Knoweldge Graph is also boosting its language support, adding to the existing eight Polish, Turkish, simplified and traditional Chinese.
• Users in the Gmail search trial already have the capability of finding answers – like when is their upcoming flight or restaurant reservation — without having to sift through email, docs and calendar data. But, said Singhal, things can get better when it comes to letting users get those answers in the most natural way possible, which means Google has been working hard on technologies like voice recognition and natural language understanding. To that end, conversational search, already available on Android and iOS, is coming to all desktops and laptops through Chrome, he said.
• Joining conversation search is hot-wording, a new interface, or, as he calls it, a “no interface,” where users can ask their search questions without clicking on the mike. Just preface a voice question with, “OK Google,” and Google will speak back the answer to you, drawing among other sources on its Knowledge Graph for the response. Google product manager Johanna Wright gave a demo of the voice experience courtesy of Chrome on a mobile device, working her way through planning a day trip to Santa Cruz through to images of its beach boardwalk, asking “OK Google, how far from here to it?,” where Google, in speaking back the answer, recognized that it referred to the boardwalk and that here was her current location.
• Enter Google Now: Singhal talked up anticipation (it’s more fun if you pronounce it like Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number), and the usefulness of having the right answer suggested at the right time, even before a user asks. That’s what is set to happen with an on-the-way feature that lets users set reminders in Google Now to show up when they need them. Also launching on the Google Now front are other new cards: public transit commute time cards and more cards for music albums, tv shows, and video games. Google is now “even more useful as an assisted tool,” he said.

Of the new age of search, Singhal said it’s not around the corner, that it will be some time before this becomes the predominant search experience. “There are lots of complex and scientific problems to solve, but our investment and commitment to getting there sooner rather than later is immense.”

David Amerland of Imassera recently shared his opinion on why he thinks Google will win the semantic search race. He writes, “Google was a latecomer to search. When you’re the new kid on the block the paths that’ll lead you to the top of the hill are strictly limited: innovate or be the best. Innovation is the obvious one, of course, because it creates buzz, sets you out from the rest at first sight and draws the attention of the Press and those who can give you publicity. Being the best is harder. Read more

Steve O’Hear of TechCrunch reports, “The idea of matching prospective dates based on shared interests is about as old as dating itself. But understanding how one set of interests relate to another, certainly at scale, is arguably something that machines can do a lot more efficiently than humans, so why not harness that capability for match-making purposes. Loveflutter, which soft-launched in New York last month, and gets a UK push today, aims to do just that. Powered by Freebase, the 37-million strong open database of people, places and things acquired by Google in 2010 and now part of the search giant’s Knowledge Graph, the online dating site connects people based on shared interests.” Read more

Google has scooped up news aggregation summary service Wavii for $30 million, according to Reuters. (Google and Wavii haven’t officially commented yet.) Wavii’s service has been influenced by expert machine learning natural language processing work, as explained by founder and CEO Adrian Aoun in our interview here. In February, a blog on the site also explained its use of classification for NLP tasks like disambiguating entities, automatically learning new entities and relationship extraction. Late last year Wavii announced its iPhone app.

Reports have it that Google and Apple were in a bidding war over acquiring the venture, which has been likened to Yahoo’s Summly buyout in March (see story here). TechCrunch says the Wavii team will join Google’s Knowledge Graph division.
When it comes to delivering personalized intelligence about what’s up in the world, Wavii aims to better understand users and what they’ll want to see in their feeds not just via explicit topic follows, but also via various signals. These include which other topics are involved in the events they comment on, how often they click into events about each topic, what topics they search for and what topic pages they visit. It also includes other attributes of stories they care about besides the topics, and their interest level in a topic to guess what the interest might be in related topics.

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Tommy Landry of Search Engine Journal recently discussed Google’s semantic search endeavors and the state of search in general. He writes, “Semantic Search aims to get at the real intent of the query, rather than simply matching a page to a search string. A good analogy is that of a headhunter or free agent recruiter. Have you ever received an email about an ‘exciting opportunity’ for which you were completely unqualified? Did they say your resume suggested you’re a fit? This is a case of blind matching of keywords with no qualitative overlay. Talk about inexact science! Simple logic suggests that semantic search will be superior to traditional, index-based approaches. Let’s look at some of the ways that Google has implemented Semantic Search.” Read more

Seen anything good on TV lately? If the answer is ‘No,’ then maybe the problem is that you and your TV just aren’t communicating as well as you could be. The same may be said of your experience across other viewing mediums, like smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Veveo wants to change the picture, so to speak. “We want the TV to be as friendly as possible so you and the TV can have a really productive relationship,” says CMO Sam Vasisht. The company, which earlier this month exhibited its Conversational Interface Technology at TV Connect 2013 in London, says there’s a need for a universal interface based on natural language capability, so that people more intuitively can grasp what is available from where in a world of fragmented content sources, including how to better search for that content and manage their viewing experiences with greater speed and ease.

“Voice is probably the most natural way for us to deliver this experience,” says Vasisht. Veveo wants to be the platform that enables service providers and OEMs and video programmers to give their audiences the power of speech. Read more

Image Courtesy Flickr/ Sean MacEntee

It’s April Fool’s Day on the Web, and we’re sensing some semantic allusions and downright sentiment analytics assertions in today’s pranks. Have a look:

• Head over to your Google search engine and you’ll be teased to find out what that smell is with Google Nose. or, as they describe it, the new scentsation in search.  Go beyond type, talk, and touch for a new notation of sensation, it promises. The Internet sommelier, Google explains, comes with an expertly curated Knowledge Panels to pair images, descriptions, and aromas. While it credits new technologies such as StreetSense (responsible for Google inhaling and indexing millions of atmospheric miles), and Android Ambient Odor Detection (which collects smells via the mobile OS), it seems to me that the Knowledge Graph had to have a hand in this one.

Aaron Bradley of SEO Skeptic reports, “Bing has announced and rolled out an update to its Satori-fueled Snapshot today. As with Google’s Knowledge Graph, Bing’s Snapshot (or ‘Snapshots’ – the label is awkward one) is entity-focused, and the update extends the number of entities being shown, improves and extends the relationships displayed between entities, and displays Bing’s prowess with entity disambiguation. While this is resulting in more detailed and better-connected results being shown for all named entities, the biggest impact is certainly in the display of personal named entities (you know, ‘people’) in Snapshot verticals.  And in this they’re arguably now doing a much better job than Google is with their Knowledge Graph (and so my reference to a ‘personal offensive’ in the title).” Read more

Veveo, [a company we have covered previously and] a leading provider of semantic technologies to bridge the usability gap in connected devices and applications with intelligent search, discovery, recommendation and personalization solutions, today announced that the company will showcase its semantic Knowledge Graph-based solutions at the upcoming TV Connect 2013. The company will be demonstrating advanced new conversational interface technology for television and video, as well as personalized channel guides and recommendation solutions being rolled out by one of the leading cable providers in the US. Read more

The NY Times reports today that Google acknowledged it had violated people’s privacy during its StreetView mapping project. Thirty-eight states had brought a case against Google on the grounds that the project resulted in people’s passwords and other personal information being unknowingly recorded by the search giant. Google has agreed to settle it by paying a $7 million fine as well as by becoming more aggressive in ensuring that its employees’ efforts don’t violate privacy and informing the public about how to avoid having their privacy compromised.

In its discussion of the settlement, the article brings up that the way now is paved for another privacy battle, this time over Google Glass. Concerns are that Google Glass eyewear also can be used to record photos, videos and audios of the wearer’s surroundings, without the permission of the individuals featured in those surroundings. With Google Glass, users can use their voice to input commands to take a picture or make a video, as well as to take steps less likely to compromise privacy, such as search for facts about landmarks or events.

How that privacy question plays out is yet to be seen. But concerns aren’t stoping the project – which was demonstrated at last week’s SXSW conference – from moving ahead. Google yesterday announced that the glasses will accommodate frames and lenses that match users’ eye prescriptions, for example.

Getting Google Glass to respond to voice commands and searches appears to leverage capabilities it has developed for its Voice Search App for Android, as well as its semantically-driven Knowledge Graph database of hundreds of millions of entities and billions of facts, and their relationships to each other.

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