Last week, when an array of Google services briefly became unavailable, reports indicated that the outage resulted in a 40 percent drop in global Internet traffic, proof that the company has become an integral part of the online experience for many users. From simple information searches, to the company's suite of cloud-based services like Gmail, Calendar, and Maps, Google's mission to become a staple of the Web continues to move forward, despite the rare network hiccup.
Now the company has unveiled a subtle, yet important enhancement to its search engine that will offer a special treat for etymology geeks.
Frequent users of the search engine probably already know that you can type in "define [any word]" and instantly get that word's definition, as well as an pronunciation guide. But starting this week, when users look up a word through Google's search engine, they will also be presented with additional information about that word including synonyms, antonyms, and example text using the word in a sentence.
Google's enhanced word definition feature also delivers a simple infographic detailing an English word's Latin roots, the time period it first came into use, and a graph that shows the historical usage frequency of the word over the last few centuries as determined by the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
The enhancement also includes a handy drop-down translation tool that can instantly translate a word into any of Google Translate's 71 languages, presented in that language's native text equivalent rather than as an English alphabet approximation. For example, for the word "geek," the Japanese translation drop-down returns the corresponding katakana character translation, rather than showing the word "otaku." And, once you select a particular language translation from the drop-down menu, the search engine will continue to include that particular language's translation for any new English word you define.
That feature alone immediately turns Google's enhanced definitions into the ultimate study companion for anyone learning English as a second language. However, based on a few brief tests, the enhanced version of Google's definitions feature appears to be limited to the American version of the search engine and the company's official announcement did not indicate when or if the feature will be rolled out for more countries.