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):

Service Name	Code Name
Google Events	ev
Google Guess	guess
Google Online Assessment	goa
Google Real Estate Search	re
Google RS2	rs2
Google Writely	writely
Local (AKA Local Business Center)	lbc
Mobile	mobile
Mobile Marketplace	mmp
New Service (AKA Workplace)	wf
New Service	gmt
Talk	talk
Weaver	weaver
WiFi	wifi

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:

Service Name	Code Name
New Service	cf
New-Service-1	voice

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.

Update: 29 July 2006 (12:49)
Just a quick update...

I can confirm that Google have now deactivated all of the new services that I mentioned above. Creating a sandbox account and trying to add these now won’t work. Furthermore, Google have deactivated my sandbox account! When I tried to login earlier today, I got the following error:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. For more information about Google Accounts, please consult our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/.

I guess that’s fair enough.

Also, thanks to Digg user merreborn for pointing out that the sandbox is actually intended for the testing of Google Checkout, and is mentioned in the Google Checkout API documentation. I guess Google just didn’t expect people to start trying to register new services on there too...

Update: 3 August 2006 (13:39)

• See also: Matt Cutts: No comment on secret Google services

Labels: google

What's in Google's Sandbox? I think the only answer to that is: lots.

I would be surprised if Google Events is ever going to be released. It has probably been superceded by GCal. Google Guess sounds really suspicious. I mean it is as if they knew you were going to dig this up and wanted to tease us all. But seriously that could be anything.

Thanks for this Tony.

Tony, there is the wifi project which is coming out of trusted tester status..

and thanks for sharing this !!

Good luck to your server, you might be cited by a couple of news outlets :)

tony
with your "new account", have you tried to connect here ?
https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?service=tester&hl=en
just for try... ;)

Wow :) I've sent your article to digg -
http://digg.com/tech_news/Lots_of_New_Secret_Google_Services_Uncovered

Dugg!


Tony, I get the French version of all theses services ;)

Why can't you login here with the tester account? Doesn't seem to work...
http://www.google.com/tester

Quick Tony, append ?hl=de, ?hl=fr, ?hl=es and so on in your Account page before Google shuts this down... this way we can squeeze more info out of this :)

I extraced different languages:
http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/47972.html#id57981

Philipp said...

Quick Tony, append ?hl=de, ?hl=fr, ?hl=es and so on in your Account page before Google shuts this down...

Thanks for the tip guys - screenshots for most languages have now been posted in the update above!

I am pretty sure I've heard of Google's Sandbox in the context of black-hat SEO tactics, as in a place where sites are exiled from the google's search results page (see BMW.de). But a developing ground does sound more like a (playground) sandbox to me. Who knows?

Workplace sounds more like a Monster.com clone to me then anything else.

Also, could the GMT code be for some kind of time-sync service, i.e. the Greenwich Meridian Time?

Actually Googles Sandbox in terms of SEO has nothing to do with Black Hat methods. It a tem the webmaster community dubbed sites that dont rank for at least 6-12 months after they are registered with ICANN. Think of it like young sites (like little kids) have to play around in the sandbox before they can go on the big boys playground.

Great post though. Its nice to see all these things organized in one place. Hopefully a good discussion will ensue regarding these new services.

cf? easy. I think google has mastered cold fusion.

I would venture to say that Google Online Assessment could be an easy to use survey/testing tool for businesses & scholars alike. It would be easy to use the Google branding to get clients or consumers to participate in testing instead of pointing them to classic survey sites like brainbench or surveymonkey.

Again, this is as good as anyone else's [Google] guess.

RS2 probebly stands for Rosetta or Rosetta Sone. This would indicate it's probably the next version of google translate.

Rosetta Stone [at Wikipedia]

Looks like Google has caught on, as the Sandbox doesn't allow the services to be added now. Google probably uses the Sandbox internally to test the apps so they can't shut down the whole service.

Makes you wonder if the SEO restriction called sandbox even exists or if everyone is really confused.

I have noticed some possible misconceptions about what the "sandbox" site is. I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure it is nothing more than a test site for Google Checkout developers. In other words, once a developer has integrated Google Checkout into their E-Commerce website, they can test with the sandbox.google.com site for functionality without actual financial transactions taking place.

Aside from this, it looks like Tony has discovered the sandbox site is a loophole into figuring out other project names.

Well, at least until Google closed that loophole. ;)

somehow this two similar links with different queries triggers and outputs the "try something new" area.

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?service=rs2

https://sandbox.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?service=sierra

google cf : Google works with Adobe to OpenSource ColdFusion, and dominates the world with it.

Online Assessment: Do I not recall that Google uses human input to assess the quality of search results to tweak the algorithm going forward. I'm sure I saw some screenshots somewhere.

Perhaps this is a link to that assessment engine.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google Assessment is some sort of testing engine. Online course management systems like Blackboard have an assessment area where you can administer exams and surveys.

I can see an instructor who doesn't have access to a university or secondary-school online course server setting up homework assignments and assessments through a Google Assessment feature. If you can invite other users to access your spreadsheet or calendar, an online test or survey should be trivial to set up.

h9 is clearly not health related. It's searching the ninth level of hell! (Duh.)

-D

That is too cool! thanks for posting this!!

Dude, have you not heard about Google patenting the "Voice Searching" capabilities? That's the most obvious answer for the search section. It will be that you can say something and it will search for it. Maybe it will be incorporated into talk, or maybe right on their homepage. This could be for accessibility too...

I believe Google Guess is the feature that "guesses" what you are searching for as your type your search query. It tries to autofill some potentional searches as you type. We use this feature on most Korean search engines.

Hi all,

My guess (french post, try google translate.

RS2, I think a code name for RSS, and it would be a web service that translates RSS feeds from blogs and podcasts into foreign languages, as Nativetext. The difference : Nativetext is a social service (by humans, for humans), Google RS2 would be an automatic service, according to state of the art of Google in automatic translation (I think Google is first in this field).

Secondly, about Weaver and h9, my guess is that we're talking about Sigourney Weaver in Futurama (in Love and Rocket), because she's voicing a parody of HAL 9000 in several scenes (Source). Now we know that for Google the meaning of Hal 9000 is The Ultimate Search Engine...
Jean-Marie

Hi again,

I wrote all a post for Google Weaver. Cheers,
Jean-Marie

P.S. Tony, I'd like to know what you think about my "theory" ;-)

Google Events sure does seem interesting. A medicore effort on Gcal make it an obvious comer. Addition of sync to mobile would make it just the right offer. airset has been offering it for a while so is zyb .

The take on Google wifi is pretty serious as in case of San Francisco . As for the rest thanks Tony you gave me enough food for thought, will drop over later.

J.Saint

Dunno if anyone has suggested this but could Google cf be something for reference? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cf.)

Google actually like all those black hat seo spam and scraper sites, why do you thing there are millions of new ones each day - they are mainly set up with google adwords - so people can click the ads and google makes money. I read about this at Black Hat SEO Black hat publications, goes into depth about white hat vs balck hat seo techniques and methods, and the plus and minus of each tecnique.

Great article!
Useful information about google future ;)

I am really hoping that google will be a bit more clearer about this. Maybe even create a tool as to why a website is not doing well (maybe due to spam sandbox or whatever). I am now searching for a tool like that to test our website www.speeltjesoutlet.nl because we are not sure why it is not picking up in the search results.

Nick, thanks for your comments but this is a different Google sandbox to the one which you're talking about.

Very useful info! I just got out of the box