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InsideGoogle
Saturday, December 11, 2004
 
Google Suggest Tools
It certainly appears some people took my suggestion to create tools for Google Suggest to heart. Patrick Gaskill has created a page that automatically displays the Google Alphabet (and he cites me when introducing it, so I'm not entirely full of myself). The page will always display the current alphabet, refreshing the list every time you load the page. Meanwhile, Kendall Willets notes in the comments that he has found the JavaScript code powering Suggest, which he describes as spaghetti code.

Also, Google Blogoscoped has created a page, Google Suggests, that queries Google Suggest for results and returns a page of URLs. Could the code (which he makes available) be used to create "active lists" that websites can display when useful? Of course it could. And that makes me realize the true best use for this technology: Google News Suggest. If a site could list the ten most popular results for a Google News query, perhaps in ticker format, it would be very useful. So Google, can we see the JavaScript made available for Google News? It would only take a minute to implement, and I know you're listening.

Check out the Google Blog, which has a new post by Kevin Gibbs, creator of Google Suggest. He explains that he put it together in his 20% time (when Google employees can do anything not in their job description). Gotta love that program, which has shown some solid results. As he says:
The project stemmed from an idea I had a few months ago, and since then I've been working on it in my 20% time, which is a program where Google allows their employees to devote 20% of their working hours to any project they choose. What's really amazed me about this project is how in a matter of months, working on my own, I was able to go from a lunch table conversation to launching a new service. In my opinion, this is one of the things that really makes Google a great place; that the company's systems, resources and, most important, people are all aligned to make it as easy as possible to take an idea and turn it into something cool.

Plus, we have Segways.

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