Google Gives Us Our Search Results Even Faster

A couple of weeks ago, we linked to an Intel-sponsored survey that declared that most people do strange things when waiting for their technology to finish whatever it’s doing, from loading up an e-mail to loading up a movie to generally anything that would cause you to sit there and twiddle your thumbs. We live in an instant world, and when our technology can’t keep up, it’s frustrating.

Google understands that probably better than anyone, and as a result, it’s been working on “Google Instant” for quite some time, and is now rolling it out to different markets. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have access to it up here in Canada – yet – so I can’t relay a hands-on experience. But, the idea is simple.

The idea behind “Instant” is to give you super-fast search results – so fast, that you’ll see the results before you are even finished typing your query. If you search for “call of duty”, before you could type “Black Ops”, the first result should reflect it anyway, since it’s a popular search. As you type, the search page will continually change to better suit what you’ve typed, so if you’re lucky, you might only have to type half of what you needed to, to get the result you need.

Even though I haven’t tested the service out, I’m not quite sure I’d like it. I find that if something is flickering or going on in the corner of my eye, I lose total concentration, and in that case, I’d end up having lower productivity, not higher. Then there’s the fact that when you are typing your query, you have to look down to the results to see if what you need has come up. If you’re looking back and forth like that, it seems like there’s another chance for lost productivity.

I can’t state anything as fact until I can give the service a go for myself though, which I hope to be able to do soon. Have any of you guys given it a try? If so, what do you think? If you’re in a market where it’s available, the normal Google page should have the Instant feature automatically enabled.

As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn’t easy—which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant. Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.