Into The Unknown

Where we once had



we now have


As of the 19th of April - two whole days ago, how did I miss this! - Froogle has been rebranded to Google Product Search. All the old URLs to Froogle still work though (even the one which only idiots ever went to), and that's how I'll keep on using it (frankly, Froogle was a much cleverer name in my opinion).

This also looks to be in direct contrast to the rumours that Froogle was to be wound down, with various rumours in the tech news now looking unfounded (and falling in line with kinda subtle confirmations that the Froogle shop wouldn't be shut for the foreseeable future, but various people interpreted the quite cryptic Google responses in their own ways). I'm glad to see it continue, even if under a new banner, because it's a really useful facility for consumers - even if it is a royal pain in the arse for shop-owners to add their products to.


This namechange is also in line with Google's rebranding, and re-announcement, of its Search History to Google Web History. Now out of beta, Web History (once turned on in the control panel) shows you detailed statistics and results for every search you've performed since monitoring began - in my case, back to May last year. As I don't keep my Blogger account signed in all the time (as I have two blogger accounts, one for my blogs and one for gmail) it's nigh-useless to me because the results are full of holes, but it's really interesting to look back and see what you surfed.