Alphabet, the parent company of Google and its various internet search engine services, has launched a new initiative along with the library system of the European Union and UNESCO. The first action within this collaboration involves the ““About This Result” side panel found within the search engine results page (SERP).
Starting this week, European searchers who interact with the Google SERP will see a pop up panel on select results; this is the aforementioned “About This Result” feature, which has been previously tested at random among certain users in the United States and Latin America. When this information box appears, users can learn more about the underlying information that fueled the result; moreover, they are also presented with links to high-authority websites such as online library catalogs across EU member nations.
Let’s say a Portuguese university student searches for “Invisible Man,” the classic work of American literature by Ralph Ellison. The “About This Result” panel may include links to Ellison’s works online or in the catalogs of the public library system in Portugal. As can be imagined, the information will be displayed in the language of the region, but the links may present the option of looking up original English language copies of “Invisible Man” instead of only focusing on Portuguese translations.
Google employs a team of programmers who take a variety of data from across the internet and processes it so that it can be presented in a manner that will be most useful to the searcher. Of course, it’s easy for them to make changes and tweaks to a page when they’ve seen certain areas being less utilized; we may see that occur with “About This Result” as Google continues to monitor the process. For now, it appears that the program’s impact on the overall search experience has been minimal thus far.
The EU, with the help of UNESCO, the UN specialized agency for education, has launched a new educational strategy dubbed “EU-UNESCO Global Education Strategy for 2012-2022.” As part of this, Google is among several companies working to integrate into these plans and improve digital education around the world. What’s more, the global initiative has been in the works since 2005.
Dil Bole Oberoi
