Google is testing a timeline search feature powered by Wikipedia

Despite having its hand in things like wearables and robotics, web search is arguably still Google’s mainstay and it looks like the company is working on a new tool that will help people point and click their way through historical events. Discovered by code tinkerer Florian Kiersch, Mountain View appears to be working on a new Knowledge Graph tool that pulls data from Wikipedia to create interactive timelines based on the item being searched.

According to your grandmother, over 96% of kids these days don’t know their history and will be doomed to repeat it. Also, no one learns cursive anymore. There’s not a whole lot that Google can do about the latter, but with a new search tool, they may be working on the former. Chrome and Search enthusiast Florian Kiersch posted screenshots of a new Knowledge Graph tool that automatically generates timelines of broad historical topics based on content from Wikipedia. The tool appears to be in the early stages of testing, and isn’t publicly available. Search for something like “World War I” and you’ll be presented with a layered timeline above your main search results. On a desktop browser you can click and drag to navigate forward or backward in time, and scrolling up or down will allow you to “zoom” into a particular point. The larger each year is on the X-axis, the more small events will be identified. Then zoom out to see much larger-scale events, like the lifespans of individuals or even countries. Resting the cursor on any one entry will give you a photo and a brief paragraph of description along with an exact bracket on the timeline. Clicking the item will shift you to a new Google search, with a new timeline for that topic.