Blog

27 July 2006

What's in Google's Sandbox?

It’s been a while since I’ve done any digging around Google’s servers to try and find some new services, so I thought I’d have a quick go tonight.

I started by looking at one of the subdomains I found when I first ran my Google subdomains sniffing script last year:

• sandbox.google.com

Since Google Checkout was released earlier this year, that subdomain has been serving up what appears to be the Google Checkout pages. However, anyone who has tried to login would’ve noticed that they wouldn’t have been able to sign in using their usual Google Account. Furthermore, if anyone creates a new account from within these pages, it’s not a ‘real’ Google Account – it’s actually some kind of test account.

(Just try to sign in to the ‘sandbox’ pages using your normal account and it won’t work. Similarly, try signing in to the real Google Accounts pages with your ‘sandbox’ login and that won’t work either.)

It appears that the ‘sandbox’ subdomain and associated Google Accounts are used for the development and testing of new or experimental Google services. So, using the same methods I used to find new service code names before – e.g. Weaver / M Scrapbook, Google RS2, SSD, Mobile Download Console and Google LH2 – I managed to find and add the following services to my ‘sandbox’ Google Account – all of which aren’t currently available to add to your ‘real’ Google Account (even though you’ll have heard about some of them before):

Note: The links used above are the same as those linked to each service name in the ‘My Accounts’ page, of which you can also view the screenshot.

Update: 28 July 2006 (13:42)
Also now available, screenshots of the sandbox ‘My Account’ page in the following languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese and Welsh!

In addition to those services, the following were recognized as being valid services – i.e. the usual login screens were available – but it wasn’t possible to add them to my account:

Old news?

• Local (AKA Local Business Center)
  Some of you will have come across this before. This appears to be related to Google Local (now known as Google Maps) where you can create, edit, or suspend your Google Local business listing.

• Google RS2
  Well, I’ve already posted about Google RS2 before, but this is the first possible hint at what it could be. The link in the ‘My Account’ page points to Google Translate, so could it be anything to do with the statistical machine translation system that we know Google’s working on?

• Google Talk
  We all know what this is, but why would you want to add it to your Google Accounts page?

  Update: 29 September 2006 (08:59)
  Aha... they were planning on releasing Google Talk to everyone instead of just Gmail users. This was released on 28 September 2006. Read the Official Google Blog post: Now anyone can Talk

• Google Weaver
  I’ve posted about Weaver / M Scrapbook before too. Most suspect it’s going to be some kind of Medical Scrapbook. The links points to google.com/h9. Could that just be a typo or might it be a code for something – i.e. Health 9?

• Google Writely
  They’ve already told us that they were going to migrate Writely to use Google Accounts, so it’s no big surprise that they’re testing that.

  Update: 29 September 2006 (08:59)
  Oops... I forgot to say that this was made live on 21 September 2006. Read the official Writely blog post: Google Account Sign-in LIVE

• Google WiFi
  According to the Google WiFi FAQ, “Google WiFi is a free wireless Internet service offered to the city of Mountain View as part of our ongoing community outreach efforts.”

So what’s new?

• Google Events
  This has been hinted at before, but only in the context of Google Base and Google Calendar. Is it really likely that Google would release a service specifically for events when they already have two that handle them? The fact that the service links to google.com/events suggests maybe they will – or, at least, maybe they’ve thought about it before.

• Google Guess
  How many guesses do we get? This really could be anything! (Unless it’s a new Google service that simply guesses what you’re searching for... like the Mentalplex perhaps?)

  Update: 14 September 2006 (10:14)
  This service was actually released on 1 September 2006 as Google Image Labeler.

• Google Online Assessment
  This could be just something that Google uses internally for internal assessments of Googlers. Or it could be used for qualifying sales leads or prospects. Has anyone got any other ideas?

• Google Real Estate Search
  Again, this concept has been discussed before with reference to Google Base. Are they going to be taking this more seriously?

• Mobile Marketplace
  Maybe number 13 in John Battelle’s Predictions 2006 post will come true. Maybe Google will finally plug mobile “into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user” and maybe they’ll also be the ones to create “a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious.” But we’ll see...

• New Service (AKA Workplace)
  Maybe this is the big one people have been waiting for; the one that will really kill Microsoft Office. At least, if it’s at all related to IBM Workplace it could be. I don’t know an awful lot about this, so if anyone else feels more qualified to talk about it, please go ahead. All I know is that it’s got something to do with OpenOffice.org – so that’s why it could be the killer...

• New Services
  With code names like cf, gmt and voice, does anyone want to speculate what any of these could be?

  Update: 14 September 2006 (10:14)
  The gmt service has surfaced in the live Google Accounts pages in September as Google Marketing Tools.

So, after all that, do we think these are new Google services waiting to be unleashed on the Google-loving masses? Or are they just some experimental services that some Googlers at the Googleplex have been playing with for their 20% projects?

Discuss.

Labels: google

39 Comments

28 July 2006 at 00:23 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 00:43 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 11:48 by  Philipp Lenssen  

28 July 2006 at 12:25 by  TOMHTML  

28 July 2006 at 12:49 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 12:50 by  TOMHTML  

28 July 2006 at 12:52 by  Philipp Lenssen  

28 July 2006 at 12:58 by  Philipp Lenssen  

28 July 2006 at 13:22 by  Philipp Lenssen  

28 July 2006 at 14:00 by  Tony Ruscoe  

28 July 2006 at 14:32 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 18:27 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 18:30 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 18:31 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 18:59 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 19:25 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 19:46 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 20:13 by  Unknown  

28 July 2006 at 20:15 by  Josue  

28 July 2006 at 21:35 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 21:36 by  Anonymous  

28 July 2006 at 23:05 by  Anonymous  

29 July 2006 at 02:34 by  sarahintampa  

29 July 2006 at 07:55 by  Anonymous  

29 July 2006 at 20:08 by  Anonymous  

30 July 2006 at 18:08 by  Jean-Marie Le Ray  

31 July 2006 at 16:35 by  Jean-Marie Le Ray  

1 August 2006 at 10:50 by  Anonymous  

4 August 2006 at 00:21 by  Anonymous  

11 September 2006 at 11:21 by  Anonymous  

31 March 2007 at 22:40 by  Anonymous  

5 December 2007 at 16:49 by  Unknown  

7 December 2007 at 10:46 by  Tony Ruscoe  

27 February 2008 at 21:53 by  Laveranues Pedigree  

8 July 2008 at 02:26 by  Zoran M Ilic  

8 July 2008 at 09:04 by  Tony Ruscoe  

27 October 2008 at 19:35 by  Anonymous  

10 December 2008 at 11:22 by  Hugh  

24 January 2009 at 02:36 by  Anonymous