Why & How: Goodbye Google Labs – 16 Google Labs Experiments You Should Know before They are Gone

According to Google Blog, Google has decided to wind down their Google Labs – A place where Google engineers previewed and let us test out their crazy ideas for web tools and Android apps. With this announcement, most of the Labs products and technologies will be ended soon and the remaining ones will be incorporated into different product areas. The good news is many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market. You may check out the progress via Google Labs website.

Will you miss Google Labs? In today’s posts, we would like to list out 16 Google Labs experiments that worth your attention before they’re gone.
Web Tools and Applications
Google Squared

Google Squared is an experimental tool that takes a category (like US presidents, roller coasters, or digital cameras) and attempts to create a starter “square” of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web. You can modify your square by removing rows and columns you don’t like–or by adding new rows and columns and having Google Squared attempt to fetch the relevant facts. Verify and correct the facts in your square by exploring the original sources and investigating other possible values. If you’re happy with your square you can save it and come back to it later. Google Squared does the grunt work for you, making research fast and easy.
Google Public Data Explorer

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don’t have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings. Students, journalists, policy makers and everyone else can play with the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed them in their own webpages. Embedded charts and links can update automatically so you’re always sharing the latest available data.
Google Image Swirl

Google Image Swirl organizes image search results into groups and sub-groups, based on their visual and semantic similarity and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface. Try this tool to resolve an ambiguous query visually (apple, jaguar, beetle) or to explore a concept from different visual perspectives (Eiffel Tower, beach, impressionism).
Google Art Project

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.
Aardvark

Ask questions, get *live* answers from your network! Aardvark finds the perfect person to answer any question in real-time.
Google Body

Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. Click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. You can also share the exact scene you are viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL. You will need a web browser that supports WebGL, such as Google Chrome.
Google Mars

Google Mars allows you to view some of the most detailed maps of Mars created by NASA scientists. Explore the Red Planet’s surface, keep track of orbiters and see the ‘face’ in the planet’s surface.
Google Fast Flip

Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.
Google News Timeline

Google News Timeline is a web application that organizes information chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline. You can navigate through time by dragging the timeline, setting the “granularity” to weeks, months, years, or decades, or just including a time period in your query (ie. “1977″). Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts and Twitter status messages, sports scores and various types of media like music albums and movies.
Google Scribe