Google’s I/O event kicked-off yesterday (a soccer related metaphor for those of us still mourning the result of yesterday’s Champion’s League Final) with an announcement of a new set of social media widgets: Google Web Elements.

These new widgets allow publishers to easily add Google’s most popular products such as Maps, Calendar and Search, to web pages without having to delve into the Google API.

Eight are available with immediate effect: Calendar – set up a custom calendar for your visitors Conversation – provide a visitor comment capability Custom Search – simple search of your web site; Maps – help visitors find a location; News – select topics and display related Google News articles; Presentations – embed Google Docs presentations directly into your site Spreadsheets – allows current reports and other info to be displayed YouTube News – simple YouTube embedding

None of these are world-shattering but they leverage Google’s technological resources to expand their reach even further, while the Conversation widget not only utilizes Google Friend Connect but will additionally help it to recover from a somewhat rocky start.

It is clear that Google is serious about social media, and real-time search in particular, and these new, easy-to-use widgets will provide them with a lot of usage data to feed the Google Labs machine.