10 Little-Known Google Services

You are probably using Google’s search engine (Google Search) and many other services, and even if you are not using them, you may have heard of them. Google offers users many different services from storage services to social networks, from messaging to entertainment. Google Maps, Gmail, Hangouts, Google Trends are the most well-known of these… However, Google also has many useful applications that are not widely used and not well known enough despite being very useful. We wanted to tell you about some services from Google today that are not very well known but that you will enjoy using and that are likely to make things easier in your life. If you are ready, let us begin.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine established by Google to search for academic topics and access academic articles written on a specific topic. Google Academic provides a simple way to broadly search academic literature. You can search in many disciplines and sources from a single place.

This service, which especially provides great convenience when doing research and writing a thesis, allows you to sort results about the topic you are looking for using certain metrics. Google Academic, which also shows the most popular topics, makes it easier to follow current academic topics in addition to your research.

Google’s Music Timeline

This interesting Google service shows the popularity of all music genres since 1950 in a chart. You can click on genres to go into the sub-genres of music and click on sub-genres to examine important artists in more detail.

The chart also separates and processes the most influential albums by year. You can see all the albums of your favorite artist or group in order. You can also click on any album to purchase it from the Google Play store, but this content is not yet available in our country.

Music Timeline is a service created by the Big Picture Group, which is a research group from Google that “investigates how information visualization can make complex data accessible, useful, and even fun.”

Measure

Did you know that Google has a tape measure application? If you want to measure the meters of something and you do not have any measuring tool with you, it is enough to download the ‘Measure’ application on your phone. The application can measure real objects using “augmented reality” infrastructure.

After downloading the application from Google Play, it is enough to point it at the item whose size you are curious about and wait for the application to give you the necessary measurements. For example, you can easily learn the measurements of a room’s wall, the height of a cabinet, the height of a table, and most things you are curious about and that will be useful to you through this application.

PhotoScan

PhotoScan is an application from Google that allows people to save their physical photographs in digital form. The application basically uses your smartphone’s camera to allow you to scan and save your favorite printed photographs.

PhotoScan, one of Google’s rarely used but very useful applications, not only takes photos of your printed photographs, but also creates advanced digital scans. The application offers features such as glare-free scans, automatic cropping based on edge detection, rectangle scans with perspective correction, and smart rotation that ensures your photos are scanned perfectly. The best part is that all scanned images are saved to Google Photos.

Google Family Link for Parents

Although smartphones are useful and make life easier, their negative effects are also very many. Especially children who are not conscious about usage need their relationship with phones constantly monitored. Google has tried to make families’ lives a little easier with an application called “Family Link.”

Google Family Link not only allows parents to keep an eye on their children’s online activities, but also allows them to implement certain rules regarding the time their children spend on smartphones and the types of applications they can download on their devices.

If you want to know what your child is doing and prevent them from getting lost in the boundless world of technology, you can take a step in this direction by downloading Google Family Link.

Arts & Culture

Another Google application that should receive much more interest but is not very well known is Arts & Culture.

For all history and art lovers, the application that allows you to discover museums, cultural artifacts, and organizations outside allows you to join 360-degree panoramic tours and observe some great works of art in finest detail.

With Google Arts & Culture, you can learn details you did not know about historical events and developments, and select topics you are interested in from among information divided into categories related to historical events or in general.

If you are interested in art, history, and culture, you should definitely use this Google application.

My Maps

My Maps, which works integrated with Google Maps, offers you the opportunity to create a personalized map with many useful and handy features.

Thanks to My Maps, you can mark places suitable for you on the map and add any detail you want. For example, you can mark your favorite places from your travels and look back at them later. You can save a map, create new maps, and even share these maps you created with your friends. Thinking that you can save places you like in different colors and with your own notes on your own map, and even create routes you like, we think this application will be enjoyable for you as well.

Storyboard

Storyboard is a very entertaining Google application that converts videos into single-page comic book layouts.

The application automatically converts any uploaded video into comic book frames. Google says it can generate up to 1.6 trillion of these combinations.

After downloading the application, it is enough to press the ‘upload video’ button on the homepage, select a video from your gallery, and upload it to the application. Then you can start having fun with the storyboards Google has created.

Selfissimo

This application that Google released at the height of the selfie craze is a gold mine for selfie lovers.

The application uses Google’s experimental research technology to automatically take photos every time you pose. The application is very easy to use: just start the photo shoot and start posing. When you hold the front camera of the phone towards yourself for a few seconds, the application will automatically take the image. It seems like magic when it works well, but since it uses experimental software, the performance depends on the device you are using. If you enjoy taking selfies, we definitely recommend trying it.

Expeditions

Another good and little-known Google Application is Expeditions. It is a virtual reality teaching tool that allows you to lead or participate in immersive virtual tours around the world and allows you to get close to historical landmarks, dive underwater with sharks, or even visit space. Everything you see is reflected in detail in AR. Google now allows users to share their own expeditions in this application. It is an application you definitely need to explore.

We talked about 10 Google services that you probably haven’t used but that will interest you very much and that you will find useful. We hope our article has been useful for you. You can immediately start using these beautiful, interesting, and useful applications in correlation with your areas of interest. Which ones did you like the most? Please do not forget to share with us.

Abdullah Altunbaş

Content Writer

Netinternet Bilişim Teknolojileri A.Ş.'de teknik konularda liderlik yapıyorum. 15 yıldır bu alanda çalışıyorum ve özellikle sistem yönetimi, ağ teknolojileri ve yazılım geliştirme konularına odaklanıyorum.