15 Amazing Things You Can Do Via Google - Besides Common Search

Since its debut in 1996, google search engine has crowned himself as the undisputed king of web search. The term google itself became a verb. We no longer search for things online, we google them.
Merriam Webster defines google as a transitive verb that means:

to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (someone or something) on the World Wide Web
(source https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google)

Photo Credit Pixabay
While many of you already know the above, if not then probably you have been living under a rock for the past couple of decades..
Yet google has tons of tricks up its sleeve that can be extremely helpful for scientific, mathematical, research, graphics work, or even personal assistance.
We will highlight here 15 of those googly (is that a word) ways that I've learnt about or used across the years .. Read on :)

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How can google help aside from common search?

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So the tricks below would provide you some cool ways to utilize google, and get instantaneous on screen results.

1. Currency Conversion: whenever I need to figure out how much 17USD are in EUR at the moment, or what is the current exchange rate between EUR and CAD, it is google to the rescue. Heck even if I need to figure out Bitcoin pricing, google supports that too! In google's search box, just type the first currency (preceded by amount if needed), the word "to" or "in" and the target currency, and you got it
   
   Yet, they don't support most other crypto currencies, unfortunately not STEEM .. BOOHOO google! But I'm sure they will soon enough wink wink

2. Unit Conversion: Add to the above, you can perform a multitude of unit conversions similarly to how we just did. I often use this feature to convert KMs to Miles, KGs to Pounds, or Celsius to Fahrenheit, and vice versa. Google supports a "ton" of unit conversions too. For a full list of those check out relevant google support article: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3284611?hl=en-LB#unitconverter
   

3. Calculator Mode: This is one of the coolest functionality i've used over the years. Whenever I need to perform a quick calculation, just type the operation into google's search box, and voila! You got the result along with a full fledged calculator to your help for any further math!
   

4. Drawing Mathematical Graphs: That is another cool Mathematical functionality by google. Students and teachers can use it alike. Just type in the target equation, and google will graph it for you.
   

5. Solving Geometrical Equations: It doesn't stop there! You can even get google to resolve geometrical equations for you. Type the formula, followed by the word calculator, and then google will assist you resolving it for the proper params.
   
   You can even make the process quicker via providing those in the search text box, such as for example a^2+b^2=c^2 calc a=4 b=7 c=? - Try it out yourselves and see :)

6. Giving Current Time Anywhere: Whenever I need to jump on an oversees conference call, or to avoid annoying clients at their night time (no one wants a pissed off client LOL), i would easily type in "time" and CITY-NAME, and google will do its magic.
   
   This will also work with timezones, querying for example "time UTC+1" will give the time at the relevant timezone.
   Similarly, if you are on travel, and need to know the sunrise or sunset at your location, you can also check by typing the words sunrise/sunset and location
   

7. Timer and stopwatch: If you have some food on the oven, or need to set a timer 5 mins from now, google to the rescue .. again! just type the words "set time NEEDED-TIME" and google will start a timer for you. Once done, it will beep like a standard timer, cool right?
   
   Similarly, you can use the stopwatch concept via "stopwatch TIME" or as depicted in image above too.

8. Weather Predictions: On travel or not, you can get google to give you current weather at a specific location, along with predictions for the upcoming week. Just type the words "Weather" and location, and there you go. With winter starting now, you can prepare your umbrella while seated behind your desk by googling it out.
   

9. Tracking Flights: If you have a relative or a loved one on travel, or if you want to have fun while on your flight (and only when they allow you to use your phone and internet .. don't come blaming me) you can easily track where the flight is and its status via typing "flight" followed by flight number.
   

10. Food Nutrition Facts: If you would like to learn about the amount of carbs, proteins, or vitamins in a specific food of vegetable, you can easily type its name, followed by Nutrition Facts. YAY Broccoli !
    

11. Translation: While google has its separate translation subdomain http://translate.google.com which you can access separately, yet you can also easily translate some words via typing the word followed by "in" and the target language. C'est une chaise :D
    

12. Find Books by Author: Finding books of your favorite author (you can guess one of my favorites below), songs, movies, or what not... is easily done by typing the word books followed with keyword "by" and then author name.
    

13. Tip Calculator: This is another of my favorites as it helps out whenever i'm having dinner with friends. This easily allows calculating the tip per each person based on the total bill. Yea we had a nice dinner thanks for asking lol
    

14. Color Picker: If you are a web developer, designer, or a graphics designer, this can come in real handy. Typing the words color picker into your google search box will bring in a color picker that allows matching RGB, HEX, CMYK,... into the proper color. You can easily play around with the tool, quite powerful and just copy paste the final values.
    

15. Bonus Entry - Google Scholar: While not directly accessible from google, more as a subdomain that you can reach via visiting https://scholar.google.ca yet Google Scholar is a very powerful search tool by google that allows performing scientific research on strict scholar literature. Check it out for more details.
    

Hope this list was helpful! While it is not conclusive of everything that google is capable of .. and it is capable of A LOT, yet I'm sure one or more would come in handy!

Thanks for reading through, and do let me know which one you found the most useful or the coolest!

@mcfarhat

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Photo Credits:
Unless credited, all images are generated as results of my personal google search performed at the time of writing this article.

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