Google Adds Pages to Web Search, Doubles Image Index

Google announced earlier this week that they'd made some changes and upgrades to their search properties, including:

Google Images -- There are now over 800 million images in their image index, in one of three formats (JPG, GIF, or PNG -- strangely enough the announcement only mentions JPG and GIF.) Strangely enough Google seems to have narrowed down their size search options (thanks to RA for the heads-up) -- didn't they used to have "icon-sized" and "wallpaper-sized" as a couple of their options? AltaVista's image search doesn't have a listed index-size, but they have more size search options if you're looking for some nice Hello Kitty wallpaper for your desktop or something.

Google Web Search -- Now up to over 4 billion documents, and doesn't that make your head hurt. The announcement mentions that Google Web search allows searchers to search for "numerous" non-HTML files, including Corel documents. Corel documents are not listed as a searchable filetype in Google's advanced search. However, if you search for filetype:cdr inurl:cdr you will get Corel documents listed, along with links to view them as HTML files. All the CDR documents I tried to view as HTML files gave me blank pages. Google apparently also recognizes at least some Microsoft Works files (filetype:wps) Microsoft Write (filetype:wri), WordPerfect (at least WPD and WP; I didn't test for every possible permutation), and Lotus WordPro (filetype:lwp). Note that these are the ones which Google recognizes and for which they at least sometimes offer an HTML version. Theoretically you can search for ANY filetype using the filetype: syntax; you just won't always be able to read it. (The search
inurl:foo filetype:foo , for example, will get you results.)

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