Google made its name on the web by doing things differently. When every other search engine was trying to fit as many bells and whistles as they could onto the main search page, Google was doing the complete opposite by stripping out everything except their name and the search box. They focused on the getting high quality results, and users voted by leaving other search engines behind.
Now Google is a mega-billion dollar corporation with a huge range of unobtrusive feature such as the ability to “search by number” for ISBNs or patents, or other things sorted by number; web page translation which allows you to look at pages written in a foreign language in your own language (although imperfect you get a good flavour of what is being said); right the way through to US phone book entries and street maps/ satellite images.
Google offer many pieces of satellite software useful to office workers: spreadsheets; word processors, the works. As well as all those there is a simple and unusual currency conversion calculator online.
The first thing that you notice is that unlike almost every other currency exchange calculator you'll ever see online, Google does not have a separate set of input boxes for “from”, or “to” currencies. Nor is there any box specifically for the volume of currency that you'd like to convert.
You only get one box in which to put ALL your criteria, and you can use different formats for your currencies. Explaining this is much easier using examples. These are the examples as they appear on the Google calculator:
- 3.5 USD in GBP
- currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
- 5 British pounds in South Korean money
- 2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre
The first example is fairly easy to follow – convert $3.50 US to Pounds Sterling. This example uses the 3 letter international currency code to designate which currencies are involved – USD and GBP.
“Currency of Brazil into Malaysian money” is more of a naturally-spoken query, and not the sort of query most people would expect software to answer. But it does.
“5 British pounds in South Korean money” is essentially the exact same example, but with a number of units assigned (5 pounds) instead of “no volume” for either currency.
“2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre”. If you're not sure what this is example is converting it may be because it is mixing the conversion of currency, and the conversion of units of measurement in the same query. It is asking Google to convert $2.20 (American) per gallon to how much that would be per litre in Indian rupees (as Indians buy their petrol in litres this is the most effective way of comparing the cost of petrol).
Incredibly, Google just says “yes, fine” and spits out the answer!
You can mix and match all kinds of price-per-unit for all kinds of units (weights, lengths, volumes) and all kinds of currency. It is actually shocking.
5 stars for brilliance.
Rating (out of 5 stars):
- 5 Stars
Link: http://www.google.com/help/features.html#currency