Marie C. Cassandra

Google has not fallen into the trap of complacency and continues to innovate by introducing new features that keep them continuously ahead of the curve. In this series, I take a look at Google Products I use nearly every day.

Feature #1: Knowledge Graph

This one completely creeped up on me when Google introduced it a few months ago. I was watching an episode of Glee guest starring Uma Thurman when someone made a reference to her character being in her early 30s. “Well that can’t be right” I thought, “Uma Thurman must be older than that. Gee, I wonder how old she is?”. Being a modern woman in the year 2012, I always have a computer on my lap while I watch TV. So, I fired up a new tab and put “Uma Thurman” into my Chrome address bar. The page loaded and there it was: “Born in 1970 (age 42)”. I closed the tab and went on my merry way.

Then it hit me. I never visited IMDB.com. I had originally planned on clicking the IMDB link to find the information I was looking for. How had I found that information so quickly? I redid the search and that’s when I actually noticed the new right rail section. Wow. They crammed a whole bunch of incredibly relevant and rich information onto the page and I had consumed it seamlessly. As a Product Manager the ability to introduce a new feature with absolutely zero learning curve to the user is the Holy Grail. Well done indeed Google folks.

Interestingly enough, a week later one of my co-workers brought up the new Knowledge Graph feature. He had read about it, but hadn’t seen it in action yet and didn’t really see the value. “Trust me,” I told him “it’s one of those things that doesn’t sound particularly cool on paper, but once you see it in practice you will totally get it.”

So how about you? Have you been loving the Knowledge Graph right rail as much as I have? Maybe you have been using it and not even realizing that this was a handy new feature!