What Is Google Instant?
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Google's just announced Google Instant! They say it's going to transform search forever—making it faster, better, stronger. But what is it, exactly?
It's predictive search...
Should you activate Google Instant Search, you'll start seeing search results as soon as you start typing. You'll also be shown a range of possible queries in grey to refine your options, all before you ever hit the "Search" button.
...that saves you time...
Google estimates that Google Instant will save people an average of 2-5 seconds per search. The reason? We read faster than we type, and predictive search pretty much takes typing out of the equation. If every Google user around the world switched to Instant, we'd save 3.5 billion seconds a day, or 11 hours per second.
...(unless you're looking for porn)...
While the normal SafeSearch filters—like those used in Image searches—apply, Google Instant draws the line at "pornography, violence and hate speech." Which means that when you try to autocomplete a generic "porn" search, you're stuck with this:
...that's already here for some users...
There's a good chance you've already got Google Instant up and running, but if not, don't feel too left out; it's going to take a couple of days for the service to hit all Google users. And a bit longer than that to hit mobile—Google says that it's not available in the immediate future for phones, but that it should be coming "soon." In any case, if you don't like it you're not forced to use it; next to every search box will be a link that lets you turn Instant off or on as you please.
...and has at least one neat trick up its sleeve.
When Google Instant is activated, the right arrow key acts as the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Glad to see that a healthy sense of adventure has been maintained.
Illustration by Sam Spratt. Check out Sam's portfolio and become a fan of his Facebook Artist's Page.
Send an email to Brian Barrett, the author of this post, at bbarrett@gizmodo.com.
Gizmodo is the world’s most fun technology website, focused on gadgets and how they make our lives better, worse, and more absurd.
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squarebab
September 08, 2010 at 7:03pm
it works great. I also tried it on my Droid Incredible and it works there too. Impressive.
Ledoubleu
September 08, 2010 at 5:06pm
Kind of funny they were searching content on Bing in that video. Just sayin'
BAMT
September 08, 2010 at 2:28pm
I probably won't benefit (too much) from it anyway, but Opera support would still be nice. (Firefox is too fat and I like Opera more than Chrome.)
Strut_Tower
September 08, 2010 at 2:05pm
This is really cool and fast but it doesn't work from iGoogle which makes it kind of useless. Hopefully it gets added soon.
hades_2100
September 08, 2010 at 1:46pm
Will this only take place on the Google home page? Because I never actually go there. All my searches are executed through the FireFox search-box.
Marcbman
September 08, 2010 at 12:59pm
This doesn't work for me at all. I have it enabled, and there is no live streaming of results, no predictive anything. Plus, the only way to get to my preferences is to open the link in a new tab. I don't even get the old search suggestions. Totally broke the Google homepage for me.
Marcbman
September 08, 2010 at 8:39pm
Are you using firefox? Ugh. This is so depressing.
EDIT: I had to enable Dom.storage in about:config. Works now =D
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