Notes from Google Media Day

At Google Press Day, Google announced four new products.

Google Trends is a new visualization application that creates a trend map comparing searches and mentions of various terms over time.  Google Trends builds on Google Zeitgeist to give you a sense of what users have been searching.  It could be very useful for developing SEM strategies.

Google Co-op is a beta of an application that will allow content providers to tag/annotate web pages.  This metadata can be used by users who "subscribe" to that content.  One example Google provides would be that "a doctor can label web pages related to arthritis, and users who subscribe to that doctor's information will receive options at the top of the results for more specific information such as "treatment," "symptoms," or "for health professionals" when they enter a relevant query."  Google Co-op is supposed to be available at google.com/coop, but right now that page doesn't produce any results.  According to Philipp Lenssen, the widely rumored Google Health might be tied in to Google Co-op.

From the sound of it, Google Coop could be a Rollyo-like application, enabling you to create custom, vertical searches, but with the addition of tagging as well.  Until the info from Google becomes a bit more clear, it's hard to tell how they envision it being used.

Google also announced version 4 of Google Desktop.  This version adds Google Gadgets, along with an API for development of new gadgets.  Initial gadgets include things like clocks, weather maps and games.

Announced, though not available until next week is Google Notebook.  Google Notebook is an online notebook where users can paste text, images or links from sites they are visiting into a personal notebook.  The notebook can be shared with other users.  Beginning next week, it will be available at http://www.google.com/notebook.

For more details and insights from Google Media Day, read:
Philipp Lensen's  Google Blogoscoped
Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion
Nicholas Carr's Rough Type
Matt Cutts' blog
GoogleRumors
eWeek blog
Official Google press release is here