PCMag.com: by Mark Hachman

Google hosted an event in Mountain View on Monday, demonstrating the future of its search algorithm, which now encompasses real-time and visually-assisted capabilities.

Demonstrations included a new voice search in Japanese, and a real-time, cloud-based translation beta service. But the highlight of the event was the addition of real-time search, which will pull results from Twitter, and from Facebook and MySpace in the next few weeks.

According to Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, Google predicated its search improvements on what she called four modalities: modes, media, language and personalization. Google confined the company's demonstrations to just language and media, with the goal of matching the richness of the Web.

"When you merge location-based search, community search with real-time search you will end up with a product that you will want, and that will be coming from a Google near you," quipped Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who introduced the real-time search results.

Google made a number of search-related announcements on Monday, the majority of them mobile related. Google Voice Search for Android and iPhone now supports Japanese, in addition to English and Mandarin. Users can also download Google Maps for Android version 3.3, which will identify and rank places of significance near a user's physical location. Google also launched the "Google Goggles" application for mobile devices, which can supposedly identify objects by taking a picture of them.

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