Google launches Instant, Streaming Search

What is Google Instant? It sounds like tea, but it's what we've been calling "streaming search." As you type, your search results change, and Google announced it today at their "can't miss search event," and they've begun rolling it out.

Google Instant a Sort of Streaming Search

Streaming search is more descriptive than Instant Search. It doesn't, after all, meld with your mind so that the result is there before you even type it. What it does, however, is change the search results as you type, continuing to suggest things as you type it.

One thing we noticed about Google Instant is that since the currently displayed search results come from the drop-down list, and from the selected item, what you're seeing may not be what you want to see. Moreover, if you don't move the focus into the drop-down list, you'll see the top item in the list, which once again may not be the correct item.

The time savings could be incredible, if you could all the users Google sees weekly. According to the company, it's a billion users a week. Also according to Google, Google Instant saves about 2-5 seconds per search. Do the numbers and that's a ton of time saved, although not per search.

More tidbits of information about Google Instant:

• Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
• Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
• If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.

Interestingly, it seems there is a blacklist of words. Type in a questionable word (and we are sure you can come up with one or more), and you won't be able to see results until you hit the Search button.

Of course, as with any such cloud-based service, it's going to take time to roll out globally. As it does, according to Google, the world will be saving tons of time, but to folks, the main result is that queries will be completed faster.

You can watch a video on Google Instant here.

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