Google's suggestions are sometimes surprising, weird, funny. Google tries to guess what you are about to type and uses other people's searches to autocomplete your query. "Apart from the Google+ profiles that may appear, all of the predictions that are shown in the drop-down list have been typed before by Google users or appear on the web," informs Google.

Have you ever tried to anticipate Google's suggestions? Google Feud is a simple game based on Family Feud that shows the first part of a query and asks you to guess how Google autocompletes it. "Google Feud is a web game based on the Google API. We select the questions, then the results are pulled directly from Google's autocomplete," informs the site, which is not affiliated with Google.

Google Feud uses the top 10 suggestions for a query. You can get more points if you guess a suggestion that is more popular and you can only make 3 mistakes. There are 4 categories of queries: culture, people, names, questions.



{ via Techcrunch }

Apparently, the latest version of Google Earth has an easter egg: a flight simulator. It's not quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it's a promising start.

How to see this feature. Make sure you have Google Earth 4.2. Open the application, click on the globe and then press Ctrl+Alt+A. You should see this dialog that lets you choose one of the two aircrafts (F16 "Viper" and SR22) and an airport.


Here's the initial view from London Heathrow Airport:


... and here's a nice view from Kathmandu:



To fly, you need to read this list of keyboard shortcuts, but you can also use a mouse or a joystick. "To disable or enable mouse controls, left click (single click on a Mac). Once mouse controls are active, the pointer shape changes to a cross on your screen."

Marco Gallotta, who found this feature, has some tricks: "Moving on though, you can get a quick start by holding Page Up for a few seconds to increase to maximum thrust (thrust meter is the left bar of the lower-left meters). Once you've accelerated to a sufficient velocity use the arrow keys to take-off. The keys are in reverse as one would expect with any flight simulator, so use the down arrow to take-off. When you've gained enough altitude then stabalise the aircraft to a straight flight path. It can be rather tricky to get the hang of as the controls are quite sensitive."

This easter egg could become a standard feature in the next versions of Google Earth and it will bring even more fun to the application.

PlaceSpotting is a site that lets you create and solve riddles using Google Maps. Your task is to find a certain location on the map with the help of a satellite image and some hints. The problem is that you can only drag and zoom the map, there's no search box that lets you enter the name of a country or an address. Fortunately, you don't need to find the exact location: the latitude and longitude can be partial matches.

If you have no idea how to solve the riddle, the copyright information from the satellite image is sometimes pretty useful. For example, in the screenshot below one of the companies that provided the imagery is Dütschler, from Switzerland. You can also use the information from the three hints to find the city. The source code of the page also contains some interesting data from Google Maps API, but that's usually called cheating.

One year after the partnership with Sony Pictures to promote The Da Vinci Code movie, Google has a new campaign, this time for The Bourne Ultimatum. Searching for [Bourne Ultimatum] or [Jason Bourne], you'll find an undisclosed ad for the Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google, a competition that starts today in 7 countries: U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the U.K. and France.

It's up to you to track down Jason Bourne across three continents. With Google tools at your fingertips, you're well equipped for your mission. And you'll have the chance to win fantastic prizes, including:

* The VW Touareg 2 as seen in The Bourne Ultimatum
* Destination vacations
* iPhones, cash, and DVDs

You'll probably find intriguing that "Google must provide Universal Pictures with the primary email address associated with your Google account for verification purposes". Besides the integration with Google accounts, a Google search box will help you find clues and a gadget for iGoogle will keep track of your scores.


Apparently, the partnership between Universal Pictures and Google didn't involve money. It's just a way to create more awareness for Google's services. "This is a great opportunity for us to bring the power of Google search products to help players across the globe hunt for Bourne online. We're always looking for creative and engaging ways to connect people with the information they're seeking, and this collaboration is a terrific example of that," said Dylan Casey, product manager at Google.

It's interesting to see a media giant and a technology company as partners in a viral marketing campaign that blurs the borders between advertising and real content.

{ via SE Roundtable }

SearchFrays is a small game where, for a given site, you have to type a query that will show the site in the top 10 Google results. The query should be as short as possible and can't include the URL or the name of the site (it would be too obvious).

Goggles is a site that uses Google Maps to simulate flying over a certain area. You can choose the starting point from a list of cities (but also define a custom starting point) and control the direction and the altitude using the arrow keys. You can also fly over the moon and Mars.

If you want to end "the game", right-click and select "Play".

Update (2013): the site is no longer available.


Google Image Labeler is a place where you can help Google improve Google Image Search by tagging images.

It's similar to what you do in Google Video. But Google transformed this boring activity into a nice interactive game. Everytime you login, Google finds you a partner and shows you the same images for 90 seconds. The first label found by both of you is considered a good answer and brings you 100 points (while two people can both fail in finding a good label, the probability is much smaller than for one person). After the time expires, you can see where the images came from and what were your partner's labels. And then you can start again, as the game is addictive.

The same images will be shown to other people, so, in the end, the images will keep only the best labels. This way, when you search for "car", you'll only find pictures of cars. I wonder if Google intends to use the labels directly or it's just a test for their recently acquired object recognition system.

A similar game is The ESP Game and this was the inspiration for Google Image Labeler. Here are the rules of the ESP Game:

* two-player online game
* partners don't know each other
* partners can't communicate
* the goal: type the same word
* only thing in common: an image

Gwigle is a game that asks you to guess the query by looking at the first search results. Of course, the search terms are blurred. The game, created by a Google employee, is multi-level and if you think the first levels are too easy, wait for the queris from Image Search, Google Maps and Google Calculator. It will be pretty difficult to guess the queries and the options are pretty limited. Good luck!



Cheating:
Click only if you're stuck...

How many questions do you need to guess a word? It depends, you'll say. But what questions do you have to ask to get relevant information about the notion? We'll start with something general like "Is it an object, an animal or a concept?" and then we get into details. How will we know when we have an answer? Too complicated, ask 20Q.

But what is 20Q? 20Q is an online game that uses artificial intelligence to guess asking just 20 questions the word you are thinking about. Because the game uses neural networks, it gets cleverer everytime someone plays it.

Is it mind reading or something? There's no magic and it doesn't work all the time: in 80% of the cases.

Is it new? The 20Q AI was invented by Robin Burgener in 1988, and went online in 1995. The game was played more than 25,000,000 million times, so now it's pretty smart.

The AI technology was also incorporated in a handheld electronic device and was used to promote Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

So where's the game again? 20Q.net.

Guess the Google is a Flash game that displays 20 images that are the results of a query in Google Image Search. Your task is to guess the query.

To make your mission easier, the query is just a single word. You have only 20 seconds, so you have to be quick.

You can see in the screenshot how easy is sometimes to "guess the Google".

Related:
A similar game for Flickr: Fastr, with a not-so-pretty interface.

Fastr is a nice game based on Flickr that asks you to guess a word looking at pictures that describe it. You should answer as fast as you can to earn more points. Very addictive.