Google Unveils ‘Google Instant’
CSU Cauldron
Google Unveils ‘Google Instant’
Google has just unveiled a new way to search, Google
Instant. It’s touted as a new ‘search enhancement’ which will fill in results
as you type! So the results I find are entered in seconds after I type just
won’t cut it anymore.
Why would we need such lightning fast speed for our search
results you may be asking; well the key insight was that people read quickly,
yet type slowly. It was shown that people typically take 300 milliseconds
between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds to glance at another part of the
page. For those of you following along at home, that’s a tenth of the time.
More obviously, searchers get to the content they are after
much quicker than with previous search technologies. This is because you don’t have to even finish
typing your search term or even press ‘search’ before receiving your results.
This allows the user to adapt his or her search on the fly.
Some notable benefits are faster searches, smarter
predictions, and instant results. Google Instant boasts saving up to 5 seconds
per search. In case you aren’t sure what exactly you want to search for, Google
Instant will fill in its best applicable predictions in grey text, so you can
stop typing when you find something intriguing.
Also, Google Instant
produces instant results, which was not previously the case; now results appear
as you type your search term in, to help you see exactly where you are headed
at every possible millisecond.
With such instantaneous search technologies as Bing,
Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’, what impact will Google Instant have on the way
people search? Will Google Instant be a serious contender, even to the extent
of being Google’s way to stay relevant and possibly surpassing Microsoft as the
go-to search engine of both Joe the plumber (to use a phrase no one has uttered
in a couple years) and Mike the businessman (because I don’t know of any
fictitious businessmen created as a talking point by politicians)?
It’s amazing that
technology has advanced to a point so that up to the minute searching can
happen, and after having a few days to get used to the learning curve, I do
enjoy Google Instant, I don’t feel that this is something that society needs as
much as help balancing the budget or some collaboration between the two sides
of our fractured government. It is
really fascinating that technology has progressed far enough to we’re now able
to receive search results as they are being typed however.
That being said, I’m comfortable with the extra 2-5 seconds
searching for any vapid piece of information I need would take. I don’t want
Google in my head that much so it knows what I’m looking for before I do.
It could be said that this will make searching more
efficient, but how quickly will people take to the learning curve of not having
to hit search as we’ve had to since search engines have existed. I also don’t
see how this will dramatically change the way we search, as any current search
engine will include results as the search term is typed in.
Another concern is that of information overload, or
receiving too much information not pertinent to what you want to look at, as
has been highlighted by the Bing commercials we see all over the television.
The current one illustrates the devolution from a child
lamenting being somewhere other than the beach to a whole traffic jam full of
cars singing Freak Nasty’s Da Dip. I
know this is for the competition to Google Instant, but the advertisement
itself fails to make me associate anything with Bing, and does cement Da Dip in my head as something I need to
be singing.
Back to that information overload--while looking for testing
centers (for the GRE), I received results for testicular cancer, and other,
less appropriate results which had nothing to do with my urge to find a center
to take a test. This can be a bit obnoxious, but convenient if you don’t mind
the occasional misunderstood search.
Google Instant, for when you need every possible millisecond
of your life, to dip. When I dip, you dip, we dip.
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