Google Instant Search Goes Live

Head over to Google.com and prepare for a little surprise. The search engine has rolled out it's "Google Instant" service for US and some European users. As you type, Google now streams search results instantly to the results window below the search bar. This major change to Google's functionality really has to be experienced to be understood.

Google claims it will save 2-5 seconds per search. That doesn't sound like much until you figure how many searches are done every day. Google say it will add up to 11 hours saved every second around the world.

I was lucky enough to be one of the early random testers for Google Instant a couple of days ago. Quite a shock to discover instant search behavior with no warning. Now everybody can enjoy.

There's nothing to turn on to enable the service: it's now the default behavior for Google. Though if you prefer the old-fashioned way you can easily disable it.

Google Instant requires a recent browser version: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. It does not work on mobile devices.

Update: Well, that's enough for me. I've turned this feature off as I find it more distracting than useful. And it looks like many other folks are just not enjoying the experience. The worst part is you now can't disable the search suggestions auto drop-down (you could before instant search), so it's still easy to get distracted with unrelated search terms even if you've turned off Google Instant. I'm sorry to see Google pushing quirky functions like this on users. Google seems to be straying from the simple, clean, and quick functionality that originally typified their search experience.