Google’s Israel Center Unveils Much-Awaited ‘Related’ Feature

Google Related is a brand new add-on for Chrome and an addition to Google’s toolbar for Explorer that aims to change the browsing experience and make it easy to find relevant information and content. The basic service that Related provides is in Google’s good old fashioned search: search anything on Google.com, and in addition to the regular search results, the Related bottom toolbar will show images and videos. One of the goals of Related is to offer relevant content that the user might have not thought of. A Google +1 button is integrated in the toolbar, to easily recommend content to your Google+ Friends.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rlWygcJqI[/youtube]

While browsing in a business website like a hotel or a restaurant, for example, the toolbar will show extra information such as a specific location in a map, reviews, similar services, videos and more. The most practical feature that Google Related offers is the ability to access all the info above while staying on the same website – no more opening tabs for maps, YouTube, reviews etc.

The add-on can be used on news articles as well; while browsing an article the toolbar will offer other (related) articles, videos, quotes of the people mentioned, images etc. When browsing e-commerce websites, Related will provide suggestions like other websites with the same product, similar products, video reviews and images.

google related

Google Related has been in development for the past two years at Google’s R&D center in Israel, appointed by Marissa Mayer, VP of Location and Local Services at Google. Yossi Matias, Head of the Israeli R&D center told Israeli website Calcalist about the need behind Related: “Ideally, I would like to have an expert advisor that can answer any question, even if I didn’t phrase it well, and could offer things that might interest me in that given moment, in the right connection and at the right time.”

Matias also added that “the Israeli center has a significant role in the search field and other fields in Google. The team had a reputation thanks to technologies and products like Google Suggest, Google Trends and some Gmail features”.

Ran Ben Yair, Product Manager of Related’s R&D team, wrote on Google’s official blog that the service can be turned off anytime – either specifically for the current page or permanently for the browser. He added, regarding Google’s privacy policy, that the service uses the website’s address, the user’s IP address and other details in order to suggest supplementary content.