Google Launches WDYL.com for All-in-One, Useless Experience

Google launched a new site called What Do You Love?. Google released the site, accessed at www.wdyl.com, without publicly acknowledging it. The site offers a unified experience for a variety of Google’s offerings in widget-like forms.

Upon visiting, the user is prompted to simply type in what they love and search around 20 of Google’s products at once. For example, any search brings the top three headlines from Google News, different readings for Books, language translations from Translate, top hits from YouTube , and popular pictures from Images. Additionally, other products shown like Gmail, Voice, and Calendar do not provide search content for the user, but rather link the user to the respective sites.

Overall, the site seems to be a way for Google to promote its widely-used products, as well as those that most people do not use. What appears to be missing is the actual Google web search. Instead, the user is directed to a download for Chrome to be able to access the rest of the Internet.

The included Product Search also seems to be non-functional at this time as no search resulted in any recommended products. The site promises more of Google’s tools will be coming soon. 

In my opinion, the site does not seem to serve a greater purpose other than a way to aggregate a large amount of Google products into one screen. For a basic Google search, What Do You Love? offers too much irrelevant information to be sorted through, even though it pertains to the searched topic.

Because Google has not commented on the intended purpose of the site’s release, my only guess is that its existence is meant as a way to explore the often un-visited corners of the Internet, a la a less effective StumbleUpon.

I fail to see the advantage of using the new site rather than using its original, fully-fledged counterparts.

What does everyone else think of the new site ? Have you checked it ?

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2 comments

ZK July 1, 2011 - 3:15 am
Google is trying to consolidate all its search offerings in one screen ...the approach seems sound, but the execution is weak. Maybe we'll see some changes in the coming days
Tim July 16, 2011 - 3:46 am
Ah! It's deliberate. If you put in a query that may be unsavory, then the default results page is cute little kittens. Other stuff works fine. Still not sure of the point of it, though...
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