Google has a bevy of products and services under its far-reaching internet umbrella, and it's good at pushing out updates and keeping some of them from falling to the wayside. The company continued these efforts on Monday with useful updates to desktop search and Google Drive.
Google has improved desktop search functionality when looking for restaurants, bars or other nearby places by adding an interactive “carousel” of local results at the top of the page. This new look has been live for iPad and Nexus tablet users since December, but now desktop users have access to local results in the interactive carousel.
US English users can type or speak their search queries, and then they can browse the carousel for local results. Just click on the places in the carousel for more information such as reviews, contact details and photos, or zoom in on the map below the carousel to select a specific location to search. In addition, clicking the arrow at the right of the carousel will serve up more places.
Google Drive also added 18 new languages on Tuesday with spellchecker support. The new languages are Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese, Estonian, French (Canada), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malaysian, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish, Swahili, Urdu and Zulu.
The Drive app will let users toggle between languages, and the languages are further available for real-time collaborations in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms. To get started on desktop, click the gear icon, select Settings, go under General, choose a language, and then remember to save out. Google Drive for mobile users can go to a device's language settings to switch languages.
Google has promised more unspecified features and updates for these services which will roll out over time.