There is a new ‘friend' in my Gmail contacts/chat list called ‘guru'. No, there is nothing Indian about it. It, because it is not human. It is Google's attempt to bring search to your chat box. Google calls it ‘Google Talk Guru' and says it “is an experimental service that allows people to get information via chat. It works on many popular chat applications that support Google Talk.”

If you are buying something online and if you want to know what 18 US dollars means in Indian rupees, you just type 18 USD in INR. Same goes for finding definitions of words. Well, you may say you may as well use Google search for it, but the difference here is that if you are inside Gmail or Google Chat, there is no need for you to get out of the application or fire up a browser just to know how much 18 dollars is in rupees.

This is how it works, in Google's own words:

Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com.

1. Sign into a chat client that supports Google Talk

2. Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com or click the link "Sign in and invite myself to chat with Guru" at the bottom of this page.

3. Find guru in your contact list and send chat queries to guru using the examples below:

Sport scores: score arsenal

Weather: weather Nairobi

Calculate: 123 * 45

Currency: 120 KES to USD

Definition: define laptop

Translation: translate earth to French

Web result: web Mount Kenya

Help: help translate

As you saw, you can get quick help but it may not be useful for a full-fledged search, because the Guru is a tweaked version of Google SMS. A search for ‘Mumbai weather' gives this result:

Weather:

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

33°C, Smoke

Wind: W 23 km/h

Hum: 52%

Thu: 22°C-34°C, Clear

Fri: 19°C-33°C, Clear

Sat: 20°C-33°C, Clear

Quite some information out of a chat box!

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