And unlike the mythical “sandbox” of old, this one does exist!

It’s the new test URL announced on their blog for the Google “Caffeine” project, which from what we can see is supposed to be a major re-write of the system “under the hood”

Google say:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” two engineers wrote in the company’s official blog.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

You can preview and test Google’s new “sandboxed” search engine here

http://www2.sandbox.google.com