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Google Instant Announced

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-faster-than-before-then-right dept.

GCPSoft writes with this quote from a Google announcement: "Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type."

11 of 408 comments (clear)

  1. You know what would make it instant? by Gordonjcp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Getting rid of that annoying fade-in effect.

    1. Re:You know what would make it instant? by DeadDecoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just tried it out and holy jeebus is it fast. My only qualm however is that, when I know what I'm looking for, it's a little distracting watching all of the results flash by as I type. Almost seizure inducing. It's very cool, but it would be nice if I could control the refresh rate with finer granularity.
      On another note, a quick refresh rate can pull up some non-professional images if one isn't careful. For instance in typing latent dirichlet, 'la' pulled up a partially clothed/nude image of lady gaga.This might have been a bit awkward if safe-search wasn't on.

    2. Re:You know what would make it instant? by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Personally excessive fade effects annoy me because I spend a lot of time using tools like vnc, remote desktop, citrix ica clients, etc. Fades are generally slow, clumsy, and downright obnoxious when viewed remotely.

    3. Re:You know what would make it instant? by CarpetShark · · Score: 5, Insightful

      30 seconds in, I found it MUCH better to just get rid of the whole thing:

      http://www.google.com/preferences

      Seriously... who made the decision to go with this? I suspect it's the same person that decided to ajaxify google images. Both are horrible, unusable things that just get in the way.

    4. Re:You know what would make it instant? by daveime · · Score: 5, Funny

      Jesus Christ, then he'd have to move his mouse all the way to his bookmarks toolbar and click something !!!

      HE DOESN'T HAVE TIME FOR ALL THAT SHIT !!!

  2. Yeah it's crap. by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This "constant updating of results as you type" makes my Hotel dialup connection run even MORE slowly than it did before.

    Even on high-speed DSL, it slows things down. Why can't these web developers get into their heads that not everyone has a 1 megabit pipe? (Or if it is available, don't want to spend ~$60/month to get it.) I remember one of the things taught developed in the 90s and early 2000s was to "optimize" their pages to use as few kilobytes as possible - like squeezing GIFs down from 50 to 10KB. Apparently that paradigm got thrown out the window.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    1. Re:Yeah it's crap. by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Informative

      Repeat that while logged in, so I can damage your karma the same way you damaged mine.

      Do you mean by making you look like an idiot so people modded you down? Or are you presuming they moderated your post?

      And there's no way to turn-off the annoying "popup" images that Google now uses during Image searches.

      At the bottom of the image search page is a link "Switch to basic version". You're on Slashdot, figure it out from there.

  3. Censored by Dyinobal · · Score: 5, Funny

    The instant search thing seems to be censored. I type Por and wait and it doesn't suggest porn at all. I type Porn and wait for some suggestions and it doesn't do anything at all. Whats the point when the thing is filtered?

    1. Re:Censored by Dyinobal · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why did I get modded funny?

  4. Re:So when did this happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is this, the unofficial Google PR site?

    Only when it's not an official Apple fanboi site

  5. Pity the slow typer... by bobdotorg · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... who gets most of the way through a search for goatseller

    --
    __ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.