Google Launches Image Swirl Experiment – How Far Will It Swirl?
Have you ever used Google Image Search to look for ‘Apple’ the fruit and instead find yourself sifting through scores of Ipods, MacBooks, Iphones and a certain Mr. Steve Jobs before finally finding that, literally, forbidden fruit? Well, then you’d better hope that Google’s latest Labs Experiment -> Image Swirl is a big success.
What does it do?
It takes potentially ambiguous image searches and tries to organize/separate the results into 16 distinct categories. It relies on metadata and other image similarities to achieve this. To some extent this is similar to wonder wheel which is available as a part of Web Search.
The quest for the apple on this experiment ended like this. 2 categories for the fruit, 1 for Apple logos, 2 for Iphones/Ipods , 2 with Apple screenshots and others seemed to be somewhat of a mixed bag.
Pretty Good for an experiment. You are likely see to images that shouldn’t be there, but the automated algorithm it uses is far from perfect and is still learning.
Who can give this a swirl?
This has been tested on Linux (Chrome and Firefox), Windows (Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) and Mac OS/X (Chrome, Safari, Firefox). All that is needed is that Javascript is enabled and a Flash plugin.
Limited Queries?
Right now there are about 200,000 queries that can be searched. So don’t be surprised if the Google Suggest like feature says ‘<sorry, this query is not included in the demo’>
What Lies ahead?
Google has been laying heavy emphasis on improving user experience with image search. This will be a very useful feature for those who rely heavily on Google for images. Saving a lot of time and giving it a edge over competition.
You can try this experiment here and submit your feedback here
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