Google today announced a new product on their blog, Google U.S. Government Search, suddenly I remembered an ancient Google special search which also searched through the U.S. Government: Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam has existed since ’99.
This new site has two functions, one of which is new. The first function is a search box, which searches through U.S. federal, state and local governments. The second is a special version of Google Personalised Homepage, which lets you keep up with government and media feeds.
Interestingly, when you run a search it takes you through Uncle Sam – which is very evident, due to the fact it displays the Uncle Sam logo – an example of this is here.
Another thing I dislike is how Google ads are displayed on result pages, for some reason this just doesn’t seem appropiate.
It is also worth mentioning the U.S. government has a few search engines, and an essay on this and Uncle Sam is available here.
Personally, I dislike how Google has labelled this whole as new, when it most certainly not! My guess is that Google must me desperate for hype, and they’ve gained it.
Still, I hope Google release such a service for the UK government.
Tags: uncle sam, google government search, government, google, web 2.0, web2.0, web2, web 2
Well they stole our searches, now we steal it back. (It is possible that somehwere in there you could find the 50,000 searches they took from Google!)