The search continues
At a special live-streamed event, Goole introduced three new features to desktop search and one to mobile, with two of the desktop enhancements directly derived from features already available on mobile.
Search By Image is inspired by Google Goggles - an Android app that allows you to take a photo of something with your phone and then instantly find out stuff about it via a Google search. You will soon have a camera icon inside the Google Images search bar that will allow you to select an online or locally stored image to search against.
Voice Search has been available on Android for some time, but Google has decided it's time to extend it to anyone using the Chrome browser, presumably with Chomebooks in mind. It pretty much does what it says on the tin - you click on the microphone and say something, then Google searches against what it has recognised.
Instant Pages is also a chrome-only feature, in which the browser doesn't just anticipate what you're looking for as soon as you start typing, it starts preloading the websites too. Google reckons this will save users between three to five precious seconds each time they search.
The new mobile search feature is a relatively minor one, but may have major commercial implications. You now have icons for a variety of local services, such as bars, restaurants, etc, that give you one-click access to local information, provided you've allowed the browser to know where you are. This could be an important part of Google's aim to defend itself from other local commerce services such as Foursquare and Groupon.
