Google went live on May 16 with a revamped Internet search engine that integrates video, books, maps and news into "universal" results to online queries.
Google spent two years transforming the architecture of its search engine to broaden results to include web pages that one had to previously seek out in separate search categories such as "photos" and "news." "It's all the stuff on the web," said Google's vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer.
The "Universal Search" platform delivers more comprehensive results and raises the profiles of Google features such as online books and video, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
"In a way it is a doubled reward because it gives more exposure to our other features such as books," Brin said after the launch was announced at the company's campus in Mountain View, California. "It's a little bit of a shame that until now they were under-utilised."
Mayer announced the search engine overhaul at a one-day "Searchology" conference focused on Google's evolution since it launched in 1998 and some of its plans for the future."