And apps and other tools (such as Google Goggles, which lets consumers use pictures taken with their mobile phones to search the web) help blend online and offline experiences in exciting and dynamic ways.

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Web sites have sprouted up to help the search, including Bankrate.com, mybanktracker.com and findabetterbank.com.

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Mr. Pichai said in an interview that "you'll see some overlap" between Chrome and Android, but Google "views these as choices for users" and that both operating systems will help promote Google applications such as the Web-search engine.

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Siminoff's small but fast-growing firm, Efficient Frontier, uses dauntingly complex calculations to help its clients get a better return on the ads they buy on Web search engines.

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Technologies like Splunk were built to help IT staff search and summarize machine data, but with just a small amount of enhancement web server log data can track in real time the flow of customers through pages, the products that are going into shopping carts, and the rate of transactions.

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The office has allowed anyone to search for unclaimed property on its Web site for many years, but it made the search available at claimit.ca.gov on February 20 to help people find the service more easily.

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