What is Google?
Google is more than just a powerful search engine. Google offers many additional online tools allowing you to efficiently receive vast amounts of pertinent information. This article will provide an introduction to a selection of Google’s tools and why they are useful to individuals in the science industry.

Google Alerts
Use this tool to receive email updates of Google’s latest results. A Google Alert is very easy to set up: just enter your topic of interest, how often you want email updates (as-they-happen, daily, weekly), and your email address.

This is a useful way to stay up to date with an industry e.g. cell therapy, a specific technique e.g. flow cytometry, a competitor or to track Google’s results for your company. www.google.com/alerts

Google Book Search
Use this tool to search the full-text of books just like you would search the web. Search by phrase, title, subject, author, publisher, publication date and/or ISBN.

Each book listing contains basic bibliographic data and links for purchasing. Some of the listings contain all or part of the book’s content, and references to the book from scholarly publications. www.books.google.com

Google Notebook
Use this tool to clip text, images and links and their web addresses to your Notebook without leaving your browser window. This tool is especially useful when you are compiling information from various web pages.

To use this tool download Google Notebook, open your Notebook using the icon on your toolbar, and then it’s as simple as highlighting text/images/links and clicking clip. www.google.com/googlenotebook/tour1.html

Google Scholar
Use this tool to search for scholarly literature by topic, title, author, date, publication and/or subject area.

Google Scholar is an efficient way to find scholarly literature from numerous journals in one simple search. www.scholar.google.com

Google Translate
Use this tool to translate text or web pages. Because this tool utilizes an automatic translate function some of the translations are not perfect, however, this tool is a simple way to read a websites in foreign languages. www.google.com/translate

Explore more of Google’s products at www.google.com/intl/en/options/