Google unleashes Google Squared

A new labs product Google has been working on called Google Squared was just launched -- it is basically a different way of displaying results to a query. Searching for US Presidents gives you a nicely formatted grid (or "square") with the information you need.

Instead of showing a typical list of search results, Squared shows you a square with headings like this:

Name Image Description Date Of Birth Place Of Birth Full Name

If it doesn't give you the information you need right away, it's easy to add your own columns or rows to customize a square. The concept is neat, and its fun to play with -- but it's lacking some features that would make it a bit more useful. For example, there isn't currently a way to sort the records it returns -- good luck finding US Presidents by year they were born right now.

Here's how Google describes the new service:

While gathering facts from across the Internet is relatively easy (albeit tedious) for humans to do, it's far more difficult for computers to do automatically. Google Squared is a first step towards solving that challenge. It essentially searches the web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way.

Maybe Google's looking to keep up with companies like Wolfram Alpha (computational knowledge engine) and Microsoft Bing (decision engine) by making a "fact engine"? What do you think of the new service?