Google’s Pinpoint is the free research tool you should know about

Now available beyond journalists and academics, Pinpoint helps users make sense of giant piles of documents, emails, audio, video, and scans.

[Source photo: peshkov/Getty Images]

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Google’s Pinpoint is now open to everyone. It’s a surprisingly powerful free tool for making sense of giant piles of digital stuff. (Before June 3, it was restricted to journalists and academics). Read on to learn more about creative ways to use Pinpoint; its new AI features and their limitations; and how Pinpoint differs from NotebookLM.

Pinpoint lets you store and analyze hundreds of thousands of files so you can find tiny needles in gigantic digital haystacks.

Pinpoint can transcribe hundreds of hours of audio and video.

It makes your handwritten text, scans, and PDFs searchable, like my enormous collection of scanned handwritten notes and whiteboards.

Once Pinpoint processes your files you can search, summarize, and organize your collections.

Pinpoint makes it easy to query, label, and extract data from hundreds or thousands of documents. It’s simple to use. No complex menus or commands.

Upload PDFs, emails, audio and video files, handwritten notes, or other file types.

Each collection can have up to 200,000 files. You can have an unlimited number of collections, which function like folders.

Journalists and academics can request “Pinpoint for Professionals,” which provides 100 gigabytes of storage. Others start with 1GB.

Audio and video files can be up to 2 hours long and 8GB. The limits are much more generous than what’s offered by other AI tools, like NotebookLM.

Pro tip: Create separate Pinpoint accounts for each of your Google accounts. That gives you more storage. It’s also how I keep personal projects separate from work. You can always download files you’ve previously uploaded. And request additional storage if you reach your limit.

Pinpoint Features to Try

Export important Gmail folders with Google Takeout in .mbox format.........

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