Hold on to your security blanket, people, because Google is rolling out a pretty big change to its search engine. Not too long ago the internet was in a shock because Google rolled out a new feature that allowed you to pick a background image for the Google home page, just like Microsoft’s Bing. Google went a lot further today, and has launched Google Instant, adding search-before-you-type results to the Google home page.
Google doesn’t add big features to its search engine very often. Apart from delivering good results, another major appeal of Google – and one of the reasons its search engine is still king of the hill – is the iconic home page and the straightforward presentation of your query’s results. As such, a major change like this is a pretty big deal.
Some websites are erroneously reporting that Google Instant delivers search results as-you-type, but if you read Google’s announcement carefully, this is not the proper name for the new feature – it works differently. Google calls it search-before-you-type. Their reasoning is that when you want to search for “bike helmets”, you’re not really interested in the results for “bike h”.
“Google Instant is search-before-you-type,” explains Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience, “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.”
“The user benefits of Google Instant are many – but the primary one is time saved,” Mayer adds, “Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!”
The feature is currently available on Google.com (for now only if you’re signed in with a Google account), and will become available on local Google sites in the weeks and months to come. You’ll need either Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or IE 8, and despite not being mentioned, I’m assuming it’ll work just fine in Opera as well (any testers wish to confirm this?).
I’m sold. It just feels very natural, and you no longer need to press enter to get to the results – you go to the results page as soon as you start typing. It’s great to see Google not resting on its laurels, and continue to innovate even though they don’t really need to.
There are people around who wonder why so many people like Google, why the search giant generates positive feelings instead of negative ones, despite the fact that they’re a company like everyone else. Well, people, it’s because they do stuff like this. They don’t have to innovate with the kind of market share they have – yet they do it anyway.
Agreed 100%.
It’s one of the most useful features seen in a while. Kudos again to the engineers working there. If I think about it, I think I use at least a google product everyday. And not because I’m forced too or I don’t have a choice, it’s because they’re good.
This is pretty cool, a few test searches seems to show that this feature is great for being able to refine your search queries on the fly and see the results instantly. On the bad side it seems that if you absolutely know what your going to type already it doesn’t help that much and might even be distracting, though if you type fast enough it probably won’t have enough time to predict anything. I do have a fairly slow connection though so that might just me. Which means that now you need a fast connection even for search (curse my states crappy broadband coverage). Of course if I know what I want to type in the first place I usually just use the search bar in my browser and only use the actual google page for queries I will have to work with for a while so this probably won’t negatively effect me at all.
This feature will be absolutely killer for mobile though, typing speed is slow enough that this can only help and it could speed searches up by a lot. It will be interesting to see how fast other search engines will be able to respond to this, because if they can’t google will slaughter them in mobile.
Opera 10.61 on Ubuntu, doesn’t seem to work yet. Worked beautifully on chrome.
on Win XP too
Only works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed…
Sounds like my guess about it requiring CORS may be correct.
Way to go with the browser sniffing Google.
Apparently works in Opera if you bypass it. Ugh.
You know, it may be that they can’t guarantee that all the features work correctly, or will keep working in future versions of Opera. Or that they haven’t tested it enough on Opera. Rather than let people take their chances with Opera and possibly have a bad experience, they’ve just disabled it. I think that’s a reasonable thing to do. And it doesn’t preclude support in the future.
I have tried a lot of search engines in the last years and most of them were not comparable. Usually I am not the one who hypes website, but recently I found DuckDuckGo which is awesome in any way. I mean it like that. If you care about search results, privacy, faster browsing of the results or even knowing stuff without having to click through the links to find what you want to know.
http://duckduckgo.com/
It’s not too known yet, but it is the only search engine I have seen that could really compete with Google. So to people who already gave up looking for good alternatives. Try it!
I switched to it as my primary search engine when I didn’t have to go through any search result (thanks to zero-click) to find out how I get git (the version control system) to do what I want.
Edited 2010-09-08 20:06 UTC
I, too, think the new instant search feature of Google is nice.
I, too, switched to Duck Duck Go about six months ago and find it to be the best search engine for my needs.
I also switched. Google gets creepier and creepier everyday. I just could not do it anymore.
I used it and I must say it’s say it is a cool feature
It is useful sometimes, but too flashy for general use. I like they allow disabling it.
Fully agree. Every ‘smart’ option needs a disable switch, ’cause there is always at least a condition where AI doesn’t bring any good (and it gets just annoying).
I’m not sure how they’re doing this new feature, but if they’re using CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) to easily separate “before results” and “regular results” onto different server pools using cross-domain XMLHttpRequest, then Opera won’t be supported. (Font libraries + @font-face also uses CORS)
In my experiments, I discovered that it’s supported by:
– Any Gecko 1.9.1+ browser (Firefox 3.5+ but not Camino which is still on Gecko 1.9.0, probably SeaMonkey)
– Any modern WebKit browser (Safari 4+ (at least), Chrome, Midori)
– Internet Explorer 8 (with limitations)
Arora (QtWebKit) has the API but it seems broken in 0.10.2.
Opera has no support at all in 10.61. I haven’t tested the 10.7 pre-releases.
Edited 2010-09-08 20:08 UTC
What ever happened to just google.com/?q=query
The URL is dead, long live the wider-than-your-screen -URL.
google.com/#q=query
You must have a very narrow screen
while this is kind of neat and all, i just can’t get excited about it. not on my list of must have features. i’ll get excited when google knows what i want before I type anything in at all. someone wake me up when that happens…
you need to be loggedin???
It’s a cool feature, but it’s visually jarring, especially when you first use it. Having the logo shrink, then, along with the search field, relocate itself to the top corner is ugly.
Logo, search field, and buttons should remain in the same place, and have the results appear below. Much less confusing.
Seems to be killed by OptimizeGoogle’s privacy features.
Instant may be a cool thing but that is a daft thing to say.
Of course Google have to innovate, if they didn’t they will be dead in a few short years, just like any other player in the tech game/info/media game.
In order to see how daft that is just insert another company’s name (ooh – lets be provocative and say Apple and its market lead with iPod or even iPhone as an example) and then make that comment. Do you see how silly it is?
Not only do Google have to innovate but their existing business model is actually very vulnerable in the medium term because it is a one trick pony. If online advertising accessed from the desktop goes down the pan (and it could with the spread of ad blockers, curated computing and the new mobile platforms) then Google goes with it.
They know this at Google hence their rather spastic decision to break their alliance with Apple because of fear of a super dominant Apple shutting them out of the mobile ad market and to embark on the ill-thought out (from point of view of Google’s best interest) Android adventure.
All they may do with Android is create another stick to beat themselves – see this for example:
http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/08/google-vs-android-part-iv/
and this comment
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/07/buchanan-bing
Up to this point, we agree. This sentence is just crap, it looks like it’s from a google marketting guy (like the whole article, in fact, in my opinion. Heavily disliked it). But then you say this…
And then, I think you don’t understand what the strength of a monopoly like Google’s or Apple’s really is. Be it only because you overestimate the market share of ad blockers and mobile devices.
Google are everywhere. And, what’s important, almost everyone on the Internet relies on them for something. Because of that, if they went in financial trouble, it’s the whole internet that risks going ten years backwards, and through donations alone they could get enough money to come back on the saddle. That is, if they managed to find a bank who’s not ready to lend them some money. Though one.
Example of things which rely on Google :
-All websites which rely on advertising as their main funding, since Google bought most of the ad market (be it for desktop or mobile web, since they are now both the same).
-A lot of open-source projects which rely on Google Code and the GSoC. All businesses and individuals which rely on those open-source solutions to get some work done.
-All individuals who neglect their bookmark collection “thanks” to google search. Due to its popularity, it has yet-to-be-matched result relevance.
-All GMail users (critical role), all Youtube users (compulsive behavior). Youtube user base goes well beyond its main page and covers a lot of websites who can’t afford video storage themselves.
-And think about all those handsets makers who don’t have enough development resources to code everything on their platform and rely on Google for some development work (OS or apps).
Again, this looks like a simplistic interpretation. As far as I know, Google Maps is still in the main menu of any brand new iPhone, I wonder if users can even delete it. And with Google Voice, the company showed that they can even beat the App Store’s infamous policy. Managing to create an actually useful application from crappy web standard that offer inexistent support for developers in an impressive demonstration of raw firepower.
Google are doing two things in parallel in the mobile space. First trying to be present on the highest possible amount of mobile platforms (as a default home page or search engine, as a GMail app, as a YouTube app…). Second by preventing Apple from getting a market share that’s too high. Because as I already stated before, market share is firepower, and Google want to have the biggest guns in negotiations. With a large enough market share, Apple could impose a much higher control on their platform, and this is what google wants to avoid.
This is, in my opinion, the goal of Google Android : keeping the iPhone market share small enough, no matter the price.
Again, are you sure of it ? In the end, it’s market share that matters. Every single Android handset still included a GMail and a Maps app, last time I checked. And though carriers can get in Google’s way a bit, if they’re paid to do so, it’s their market interest not to do so extensively, because…
– The more they reduce Android’s abilities, the less Android handset sell, the less money they get. Except, of course, if they want to favor another manufacturer.
– Carriers know that it’s not in their best interest to favor Apple too much. Here in France, in the early iPhone years, they just turned every single mobile phone ad into an iPhone ad, but now there isn’t any iPhone ad anymore on the roads. If I wasn’t a geek, I wouldn’t even have known that the iPhone 4 is out. Carriers are now quiet because they know that Apple’s philosophy of control means less income and less control for them, and they don’t want that.
– So carriers try to favor the BlackBerry and Symbian platforms. But in the end, they know that the sheep wants a smartphone with a large touchscreen, facebook integration, and silly apps on it. They must advertise such phones if they want all those customers that have a lot of money and no brain. Hence Android becomes the logical choice…
Geopolitics of the mobile space are complex, so I may be misunderstood, but I think that Google aren’t in such a bad shape as you think.
Edited 2010-09-09 07:47 UTC
It looked to me as if Google, faced with possible Apple dominance of the mobile space, opted for a strategic response, Android, without really thinking through their strategy. Thats not a surprise really as everything I have read about Google’s internal working strongly suggests a company lacking a strategic central command and focus, and one built on enormous but rather chaotic forward momentum.
If Android is a strategy to keep Google dominant (or at least very strong) in the mobile space it may not work very well. Already the Chinese variant has spiralled completely out of Google’s control and now you have mainstream handset makers and carriers making models with Android but blocking Google search. You can add to that problem the issue of OS fragmentation.
In order to deal with this problem Google would have to police the Android space and Android deployments in way similar to the way that Microsoft policed Window deployments (no OEM could tinker about with Windows, remove IE for example, change the interface or remove features, all they could do was add craplets). If Google went down that path they would find themselves in direct conflict with the handset makers and it would be a battle of will and strength and I am not sure Google has a strong enough hand here. Microsoft could only play hardball with the OEMs because it was really a monopoly and there really was no alternative. In the mobile space there are alternatives. Apple’s iPhone and RIM are alternatives to Android handsets as external constraints on an Android/Google monopoly and there now alternative OS catching up such as WP7 for hand set makers to consider using (can you imagine the financial inducements Microsoft are offering).
Google has some hard decisions to make if Android is to deliver what Google wants (extending their search/Ad monopoly to the mobile space).
As for the notion that Google will become a sort of global internet charity dependent – please get real. Google may seem an institution now but so was Compuserve, Minitel and AOL once. Anyone remember a company called Siri -where did they go and I wonder what they are up to
I don’t think Google will disappear but it could find itself, its cashflow and its profitability terribly squeezed by the rise of the mobile space and Android may end being a poor response.
In my opinion, even when things like this occur, Android can still be useful for Google, as a source of chaos and fragmentation in the mobile space.
Formerly, the mobile space was largely unorganized. Tons of company made low-end handsets, a few companies were dominant in some niche market (palm&hp in the PDA world, BB for business-oriented cellphones), and globally the sole dominant player was Nokia, because they were rich enough to adapt themselves to every single use cases (and made phones that can fall in water from the top of a building and still work after drying the pieces and putting them back together).
Nokia’s domination does not harm Google’s business, since the brand is largely open-minded and driven by business logic. This is what made it successful. If Google want to distribute some Youtube app on nokia handsets, they can, provided that they pay nokia a large enough sum of money. Google has that money.
Now, a new kind of market has emerged in the mobile world : touchscreen phones with dumb applications and high-quality web browsers. And for some reason Nokia did not adapt itself well as usual. They probably did not see it coming (who would buy a futility-oriented phone, seriously ?). The newcomer, Apple, could hence invade it with its product.
The problem for Google is that Apple are not driven by usual financial logic. They are ready to lose money and market share if they can tightly control their products and users in their whole lifespan. Google, as a major player on the Internet, is an obstacle to Apple’s absolute monarchy, so they know that if Apple manage to get some serious market share in the mobile space, they will be in big trouble.
This was the situation when development of Android began.
Let’s see what’s happening now : if things continue to go this way, Android handsets are going to outsell the iPhone, no matter if it’s under Google’s control or not. That’s because they are cheaper, and fit much more use cases than Apple’s gizmo. If Google loses its grip on Android, milions of manufacturers and business interests will get a small part of it. So in the end, no one will be able to pretend “I control the android market”. Like in 2006, there will too much players around.
Most companies would be happy to treat with Google, include a Youtube app and a GMail app, and so on. The bing example is an exception, and Google know that. So in the end, by treating with each manufacturer separately, they can manage to govern the mobile web in the end. Because unlike local applications, websites work on *all* Android handsets in the same way.
(PS : And if Apple wants to avoid this scenario, they must make sure that their iOS devices cover much more use cases. This means making them cheaper and more flexible. I see Apple making cheaper devices, but I think they’ll lose in the flexibility area. Simply mentioning in front of Jobs the idea of letting an user browse its files, or code applications in Flash and on a PC, is risking death penalty. Same for suggesting that the touchscreen interface may be impractical in several cases and that including more buttons could have its uses…)
Edited 2010-09-09 11:06 UTC
Nokia couldn’t build a touch based modern smart, and still can’t, because they lack the software engineering and UI skills.
That made me laugh. Apple are the most financially successful tech company and that includes specifically being the most financially successful phone company. Since launching the iPhone Apple have basically walked of with the entire profits of the whole phone business. See this
http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/17/androids-pursuit-of-the-biggest-lo…
and this
http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/07/will-apple-need-to-cut-margins-on-…
So what? Even if that scenario came true Apple would almost certainly keep taking the bulk of profits and would still sell tens of millions of iPhones per quarter. Trying to think that this is a rerun of the past with Android as Windows will lead to misunderstanding the realities today. In my opinion the most likely outcome will be a big share of the market each for Apple and Android, Windows Phone 7 is a dark horse and too early to call but it could be a runner.
No one will be defeated or eclipsed except almost certainly Nokia (unless it adopts Android or there is a miracle) and probably RIM. Many hand set mnakers will continue to operate on razor thin profit margins.
Neither Android or Chrome guarantee Google an income earning future in the mobile world of tomorrow, and as long as (financially) they remain a one trick company they will remain vulnerable.
Apple have just approved third party development tools for the iPhone including Flash based tools.
Touchscreen is not that special, an good UI team could code something for it in a matter of months. That is, if the widget set is flexible enough.
In my opinion, this is Nokia’s problem : the UI code in s60 was probably made with only keyboard interface in mind, with manually specified pixel size for buttons and so on. So adapting symbian to touchscreens require a major rewrite, a rewrite which takes time, even when they have the necessary skills around.
Apple did not have that problem because they started coding with touchscreens in mind right away.
Sure. That’s normal, because
1/They took the market by surprise
2/They were there first, so they have a reputation advantage
3/Their product is of reasonably good quality
4/The app store is the only mean of getting applications on the device, and because of this monopoly Apple can introduce insanely high charges for developers who use it.
5/They sell only one device and charge an insanely high price for it
My point is that they could have made more money. By being more attractive for the BlackBerry userbase, as an example. Apple could have made more money with things like better mail management, a user-accessible and properly organized filesystem, and arguably in the long term if they did not choose the App store-only + iTunes-only business.
Do you think so ? This is not certain, because the current iPhone ecosystem only appeals to the wealthier people, while the Android ecosystem is for almost everyone.
If Apple hits 10% of the market with a device which costs $700 (actual cost for Apple : $200) and Android hits 80% of the market with a device which costs $300 (Actual cost for the manufacturer : $150), the sad truth is that Android still wins, because 8×150$ = 1200$ and 1×500$ = 500$. App sales undergo a similar equation : less profit per user, but on a much larger user base, can mean more profit.
So in the end, unless Apple understand that and sell lower-end models, or let other brands do it, they will lose the game. But, in my opinion, Apple probably won’t allow other brands to make iOS device because they are still pissed off an obscure Macintosh clones story and won’t dare to admit that the PC was successful because of its clones. History made them control freaks.
Who knows… Discussion gets too speculative on this path, so I think we should stop it there, and wait to see how things go.
May you be right. We can’t afford another Windows story, the current shape of the smartphone market would make it far worse, partly due to jerky moves from Apple (*cough* App Store *cough*) that have been widely accepted and have now become the norm.
May you be wrong. Nokia is one of the best phone makers out there, it would be great if they came up with their great ideas on the touchscreen market.
As of RIM, their problem will be to change their use base : their smartphones are seen as a products for boring people in smoking and ties, changing this image without losing their current user base will be difficult, though they try their best with things like BlackBerry Messaging.
Again, this can be a way to profit. Thin margins + Much higher market acceptance = Higher profit, in the end…
This again becomes too speculative, so I won’t answer that.
Indeed, they have surprised me with this one. Guess this means that they’re finally fully ditching the Mac platform. One victory for software freedom in the mobile space, though many ugly things still remain…
Edited 2010-09-09 20:16 UTC
When running Google “Instant,” typing was FAR slower and a lot of results completely irrelevant to what I was looking for came up… it was like bringing the efficiency of IE8’s per-key find command to the formerly-clean Google interface. Maybe it’s optomized for Chrome… either way, I opted out.
I hope Google Instant isn’t turned on by default for the non-logged-in user.
It’s always amazing how fast Google can bring you the results… and how relevant they usually are.
I’m using Firefox and am logged in but it does not work?
Does noscript or something block this?
Disable noscript and see for your self.
For me this feature only seems useful if you are the kind of person that wants to search for Britney Spears pictures, Turkey recipes or if you are the person that is terrified of Chinese people.
For the few times Google predicts what I want to search right it only save me pressing the down arrow and enter. Whoo-hoo.
If Google knew what I wanted to search before -I- know, now that would be cool! (and a bit scary)
Funny that Google should introduce this feature now. A year or so ago, the news were full of articles where scientists argued that the carbon footprint of Google searches is too high. This is from the top of the (Google) result list: “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle” (http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article54…).
True or not, Google actually felt compelled to answer/counter these claims (see http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/), though I’m not sure they succeeded completely.
And now they introduce a feature that (for a two-term search string) replaces one query with 5-10? All so that Thom won’t have to press the enter key (though actually he has to move the mouse more because of the query candidates)? I don’t think you have to be an extreme environmentalist to see that the pain far exceeds the gain in this case.
As for the feature I actually find it obtrusive and useless, but it’s beside the point.
In the last year, google search started to become something horrible. Before, you typed keywords, waited a bit if you wanted a suggestion, pressed enter, and saw the result. Now, feature bloats starts to creep around, with a silly sidebar in the results, and this major distraction while you type.
Let’s hope competitors finally manage to release some good product, in Google Search’s original spartan spirit.
Edited 2010-09-09 07:53 UTC
I’m sorry to tell that, but really, I don’t see the point in all this.
When I type search keywords, (say “dickens”), I’m not interested at all with results of a shorter version of this word – the 4 first letters for example.
I’m pretty sure it will take longer for my human brain to analyse the partial results than to continue typing an pressing Enter.
Moreover, I can’t imagine the waste of energy that those searches represent.
10 letters typed : 10 searches launched ?
for what benefit ?
I personnaly disabled the fonction.