Google Tries To Please Parents Again, This Time With Animal Noises
Google adds animal noises to search, becoming a more kid-friendly and educational search engine for early childhood learners.
Google launched this initiative to help young learners who have difficulty learning new things during the early stages of life. Working with parents and early childhood educators, Google has provided a tool that makes learning both fun and easy.
The leading search engine has integrated a new feature into its algorithm that will teach kids all the different sounds that animals make. This feature works by simply Googling the keyword phrase “animal noises.”
The search results page returns animal names and sample sounds.
There’s no word on when more animal sounds will be added to Google search.
This is not Google’s first attempt to reach the children’s market. Other companies owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, have been trying to reach the children’s market for some time.
In February 2015, Google launched YouTube Kids, an app which offers videos specifically for children. YouTube Kids features programs like Wallace & Gromit, Teletubbies, and Morph and the Magic Roundabout.
In March 2016, Google launched the Spanish language version of YouTube Kids in Latin America.
Adding animal sounds to the Google search algorithm is just one more step Google has taken to make searches more kid friendly.
In December 2014, Google announced the company would work to improve the user experience for search users under the age of 13.
“User experiences for a range of Google products are ripe for under-13 makeovers. What also is being worked out are the ways in which parents will be able to oversee their child’s interactions with Google’s technologies, perhaps limiting usage to set time frames.”
“‘We want to enable supervision but not be regimental,’ says Diwanji during a visit to Google’s San Francisco outpost. ‘But that’s challenging because no two parents are alike. I have friends who are helicopter parents and others are even more liberal than me, but everyone has to be accommodated by whatever we create.'”
For a while, people thought Google had lived up their promise of allowing parents to oversee their child’s interactions with Google’s technology. The internet rumor mill swarmed with news of a new kid-friendly Google search engine designed specifically for children. Chelsea Frisbie, a Mashable intern, reported that Kiddle was a kid-friendly search engine powered by Google.
The Inquisitr writer Danielle McGraw eventually made it very clear that Kiddle is not associated with Google and it is not exactly kid-friendly.
Chuck Price, a contributor at Search Engine Watch, believes there are “plenty of Google alternatives and many of these players offer a better search experience, depending on your needs.” Creative Commons is a Google image search alternative, CrunchBase is a startup search engine, and AdsWish provides users a quick and easy way to search classified ads only.
Search engine users want to save valuable time and use the search tool that will return the results they need as quickly as possible. Alternate search platforms provide various interfaces and unique algorithms based on the needs of a target user.
Eventually, a kid-friendly search engine, that works as it should, will enter the market. Will it belong to the Google family? Because the Google brand is the most trusted search brand, a kid-friendly search engine owned and powered by Google would most likely receive a warm welcome from parents and educators.
[Image via Flickr/mjmonty| Resized and Cropped]
