Google Tools


Love it or hate it, Google has lots of tools that can change your web/teaching experience (and maybe even your life). If you only make it to "Google.com" you are missing A LOT of free cool tools (free...did I mention...free?)

 

This list is taken from one of the Wikipedia pages about Google. I have edited the list by eliminating discontinued services and those not really applicable to education (advertising, etc)

 

If this is too big of a list for you, here are the must knows:

 

 

GOOGLE TOOLS LIST: 

 

Account management

Dashboard is an online tool that allows Google Account holders to view all their personal information Google is storing on their servers.

 Communication and publishing

Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom, hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.
Free online calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function which allows users to insert events using natural language input. Other features include Gmail integration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those offered by Yahoo! and MSN.
Document, spreadsheet and presentation application, with document collaboration and publishing capabilities.
News feed management services, including feed traffic analysis and advertising facilities.
Friend Connect is an online service that empowers website and blog owners to add social features to their websites. It also allows users to connect with their friends on different websites that have implemented Google Friend Connect on their website.
Mini-applications designed to display information or provide a function in a succinct manner. Available in Universal or Desktop format.
It is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are.
Free Webmail IMAP and POP e-mail service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface. It was first released in an invitation-only form on April 1, 2004. Mobile access and Google Talk integration is also featured.
Customizable homepage, which can contain Web feeds and Google Gadgets, launched in May 2005. It was renamed to iGoogle on April 30, 2007 (previously used internally by Google).
Web clipping application for saving online research. The tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from pages while browsing, save them online, access them from any computer, and share them with others. Google recently stopped development on Notebook and no longer accepts sign-ups, While old users can still access their notebooks, newcomers are offered to try other services such as Google Docs and Google Bookmarks[1].
Knol is a service that enables subject experts and other users to write authoritative articles related to various topics.
Social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. In November 2006, Google opened Orkut registration to everyone, instead of being invitation only.
Photos of the world.
Online photo sharing, with integration with the main Picasa program.
Web-based news aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds. It allows the user to search, import and subscribe to feeds. The service also embeds audio enclosures in the page. Major revisions to Google Reader were made in October 2006.
Known as "GrandCentral" before 2009-03-11, this is a free voice communications product that includes a POTS telephone number. It includes a follow-me service that allows the user to forward their Google voice phone number to simultaneously ring up to 6 other phone numbers. It also features a unified voice mail service, SMS and free outgoing calls via Google's "click2call" and 3rd party dialers.
Still in early developmental stages, Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. [2]
Popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock. The deal closed on 13 November 2006.
Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that enables you to contribute and read helpful information alongside any web page. The service came to be online since Sep 23, 2009‎. [3]

 

 Mapping

Mapping service that indexes streets and displays satellite and street-level imagery, providing driving directions and local business search.
Edit the map in more than a hundred countries and watch your edits go into Google Maps. Become a citizen cartographer and help map your world.
Web Based building and editing tool to create 3D buildings for Google Earth.
Imagery of Mars using the Google Maps interface. Elevation, visible imagery and infrared imagery can be shown. It was released on March 13, 2006, the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
NASA imagery of the moon through the Google Maps interface. It was launched on July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on July 20, 1969.
An Internet tool for viewing the stars and galaxies, you can now access this tool through a browser version of "Google Sky".
Public transport trip planning through the Google Maps interface. Google Transit was released on December 7, 2005, and is now fully integrated with Google Maps.

 

Search

Search engine for the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises usable and accessible web sites in the search results, so the user incurs minimal distractions when browsing.
E-mail notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever there are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results news, and video.
Google submission database, that enables content owners to submit content, have it hosted and make it searchable. Information within the database is organized using attributes.
Weblog search engine, with a continuously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and filtered by date.
Search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books.
Online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Webmasters can choose to implement Google Checkout as a form of payment.
Search engine for programming code found on the Internet.
Once part of Google Translate, it is now a standalone service that allows searching of words and phrases from over 22 languages[2].
Collection of links arranged into hierarchical subcategories. The links and their categorization are from the Open Directory Project, but are sorted using PageRank.
Online news aggregator that mimics the experience of flicking through a newspaper or magazine, allowing visual search of stories in manner similar to microfiche.
Searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
Web and e-mail discussion service and Usenet archive. Users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite topics, write a set of group web pages updatable by members and share group files. [4]. In January, 2007, version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the ability to create customised pages and share files.
Game that induces participants to submit valid descriptions (labels) of images in the web, in order to later improve Image Search.
Image search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.  
A specialised search engine that obtains Film showing times near a user-entered location as well as providing reviews of films compiled from several different websites.
Automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
Feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles from over 200 years ago.
Search engine to search through millions of patents, each result with its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.
Price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products.
Google China's search trend site, similar to Google Zeitgeist. Currently part of Google Labs.
Search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online.
List of items generated when the user enters a few examples. For example, entering "Green, Purple, Red" produces the list "Green, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown."
Mobile phone short message service offered by Google in several countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, India and China and formerly the UK, Germany and Spain. It allows search queries to be sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no premium charge for the service.
Creates tables of information about a subject from unstructured data
Auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular searches.
Listings for search engines for university websites.
Search engine and Personalized Homepage that exclusively draws from sites with a .gov TLD.
Video search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships include agreements with CBS, NHL and the NBA. Also searches videos posted on YouTube, Metacafe, Daily Motion, and other popular video hosting sites.
Non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local businesses
Web page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images, videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations. Google released Search History in April 2005, when it began to record browsing history[3], later expanding and renaming the service to Web History in April 2007.[4]
Web search engine, which is Google's core product. It was the company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains their most popular and famous service. It receives 1 billion requests a day and is the most used search engine on the Internet.

 

Statistics

Traffic statistics generator for defined websites, with strong AdWords integration. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns, based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on the Urchin software and the new version released in May 2007 integrates improvements based on Measure Map.
Data trend viewing platform to make nations' statistics accessible on the internet in an animated, interactive graph form.
Graph plotting application for Web Search statistics, showing the popularity of particular search terms over time. Multiple terms can be shown at once. Results can also be displayed by city, region or language. Related news stories are also shown.
Puts you in charge of your health information. It claims to be safe, secure, and free. Organize your health information all in one place.