Google Press Day Rumors
With Google Press Day just a week away, it’s time for the Google rumors to come pouring in. And have they ever.
Barry has the news of a USA Today blog entry where Google’s Vice President of Search Products Marissa Mayer not-so-subtly hints that concrete news regarding Google Health may be coming next week. When asked why Google didn’t have a developed vertical search for Health, Mayer responded: “Health is an interesting one — keep your eye out for that next week.”
While that doesn’t necessarily spell the launch of Google Health, I think it’s guaranteed a few slides regarding the vertical search will ‘accidentally’ be left in the slide projector that day. Will Google Health be another OneBox or will it be a full-on Web MD competitor? We’ll find out next week, but I’m hoping for the latter.
According to elfin Mayer, other things to watch for are full video being integrated into Google News and the main Google search results. Mayer says ‘video will play a big role. If you search for how to cut up a chicken or how to change a flat tire, video is the right answer’.
But that’s not all. ZDNet’s Garett Rogers points to a new addition to Google’s robots.txt file – the abbreviation UDS. What does it mean? While I could come up with a series of crazy (and highly entertaining) concoctions, Garett goes with the realistic guess of ‘Unlimited Data Storage’ aka Google Drive. Will there be a GDrive announcement during Google Press Day? Please ignore that Jaws theme you hear in the background.
Google-related but rumor-unrelated, Phil Lenssen has a fun look at what the Googlebot may actually look like. While the drawings he includes are cute, I always imagined the Googlebot to be less robotic looking and more spider-ish. With a primary-colored cape. He has to have a cape. How else is he supposed to navigate through the almost infinite amount of web pages? C’mon.
And while Phil was looking at Googlebot illustrations, Nathan discovered the new Google gum. Nathan says upgrade, but I vote downgrade. There’s no witty Google pun and you have to actually pay for it. Why would I pay $1.95 for unfunny Google gum?