Google Labs

Google Labs was a page created by Google to demonstrate and test new projects.

Google described Google Labs as "a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them."

Google also uses an invitation-only phase for trusted testers to test projects including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Wave and many of these have their own "labs" webpages for experimental projects unique to each product.

In 2006, all Google Labs products had a consistent logo, using the flask, and a gray title, as opposed to other color-coded Google products, such as Google News and Google Maps. This warns users that the product may contain bugs, and could be unfit for general use.

End of Google Labs

In July 2011, Google announced that they were discontinuing Google Labs.

Many of the experiments have been discontinued although a few have moved to the main search pages. The Google Labs pages now redirect to the main Google pages. Google still has many links to its defunct "lab" tools in Google blogs that are readily accessible through a Google search.