Google Give Searchers 'Instant Previews' of Result Pages

First pressing 'Enter' was to much work... now actually clicking on the links and visiting the sites is to much, too... Google is testing instant previews, where you can see a miniature rendered view of the landing page without requiring you to click through and back-arrow.

Comments

There's only one upgrade needed for Google

[taustin]

And that's to turn off Javascript, which returns it to the original, clean, doesn't-suck-donkey-dick home page with a box to type in the search term and a couple of buttons to click.

Re:There's only one upgrade needed for Google

[mark72005]

Personally I hate the "no enter button" thing, because it retrieves results based on typos and altogether before I am finished forming the query I want to make. It runs contrary to the flow of 15+ years of search engine usage for me.

It's also annoying as hell to revise the query only to have that dropdown appear, obscuring part of the page.

Personally, especially at work, I don't want Google pulling up any random page from search results on my behalf.

Stop trying to think for us, and be what Google originally was - simple, lightweight, doing only what I need and nothing more.

Re:There's only one upgrade needed for Google

[Ksevio]

Well it's very easy to turn it off, just click the settings link at the top of the page.

The drop down also does not obscure any of the page, it pushes it down.

If you don't want to use new helpful Google features, you have the option to opt out of them, but Google does a significant amount of testing on their pages for usability so I'm sure most people will find these features helpful.

Re:There's only one upgrade needed for Google

[__aagctu1952]

Yep, that does cure most of what ails it. But 1) most people don't know how to do this, and 2) it's a damned nuisance even tho I can do it with one tick of a checkbox.

And then you've got to turn it back on to get any useful behaviour from Google Maps, tho they've become so cumbersome of late

Ah, but you don't!
If you're using Noscript, whitelist maps.google.com (by default, Noscript whitelists the entire domain - but you can whitelist subdomains manually) and gstatic.com. There's no need to whitelist all of google.com.

Re:There's only one upgrade needed for Google

[mark72005]

Search engines are supposed to be a transaction. "Here's what I want." "Here are your results"

It's annoying I think to most people in a way that is hard to describe. It's like speaking to a person who always tries to finish your sentences before you're done speaking.

-1 Please No!

[Rysc]

The instant search results are a pain for me. They violate my back button expectations and they interfere with my web searching workflow: I may alter my query in preperation for the next iteration while still scanning the page for links to open in new tabs.

It also uses excessive bandwidth by searching for me--and causing the page scrollbar to jump around jarringly--when I am not done typing.

One thing I always liked about Google right from the first is that they're *lightweight* and fast. Clutter free and minimal to the greatest extent possible. I understand with things like the never-ending-image-search and instant results from queries they're trying to compete with the glitz of bing and other so-called competitors, but this seriously hurts the experience for users like me. Please, Google! You don't have to compete on glitz when you have a hands-down superior product!

Not only useless but also distracting

[recoiledsnake]

First Google Instant and now this. What's the value in seeing a small thumbail of the page? The text is too small to read anyway and this will only add to the distraction. You can't evaluate a page based on the layout or how it looks. You're usually looking for content when you search.

Re:Not only useless but also distracting

[LordKronos]

What's the value in seeing a small thumbail of the page? The text is too small to read anyway and this will only add to the distraction. You can't evaluate a page based on the layout or how it looks. You're usually looking for content when you search.

Actually, there is a lot of value in this, at least for me. A lot of times I find that I'm trying to go back and re-find some page the I found in the search results a while back. In my head, I know exactly what the page looks like, but currently I have to click on each link one at a time, wait 1 to 10 seconds for each page to load, go back, and repeat. This would be much quicker.

Aside from that, I'm sorry to tell you, but one often CAN evaluate a page based on how it looks.

visual people

[Speare]

I like this feature for a couple reasons. I'm a visual person, I like seeing if the site is the one I remember before I go visit, or if it's a spam-link-farm kind of page that's just wasting my time. I also like their "highlight" that shows WHERE in a page I'll find the sought phrase they snipped.

I also like the Google Flip feature at the bottom of their news page, but I don't like the two-click process to visit the site. Clicking on the preview gives a (useless) bigger preview, and then clicking on that takes you to the showcased page. Without the second preview, it would be a nice little stumbleupon-like way of finding interesting stories/news/ideas around the web.

Enough already!!

[Reziac]

Dammit, all I want is simple search. I don't want previews, or weighted results, or guessing what I really meant, or a map and pictures and previews of everything that happens to come up in the list of results. Just give me the damned plain search and the naked results. Stop wasting my time with YOUR idea of what YOU think I wanted.

Oh wait, that should be "What your ADVERTISERS think I wanted". My mistake.

Google got popular because it was SIMPLE and FAST. It's a damned shame there's no competition left that believes in simple search, so now even Google feels free to tell us how WE want to search.

What the search world needs is a reset, back to what Google was like when it was new and still eager to collect more eyeballs, instead of the 800 pound gorilla that dictates how every web page is optimized and which ones we get to see when we go looking for something.

Just stop it!

[RapmasterT]

I don't want to see a single new Google technology until they put the Google image search back to the way it used to be before they shitified it. It's so damned annoying to use now that I'm actually using Bing when I want to search images.

Why fix what is not broken? I'm going to hate it!

[mrnick]

I don't like the feature, on Google, that moves an indicator when I press my arrow keys and lets me (forces me to) select the link with the enter key. I use my arrow keys for scrolling, not for navigation within the embedded HTML. I have a strong feeling I'm not going to like this either.

Remember when Google won us all over with their simplistic no frills search results? Why do people feel the need to fix what is not broken??

Nick Powers

We're not there yet

[melonman]

I'm holding out for Quantum Google, which displays instantly every single web page that does and could ever exist. That way I'll never need to search for anything ever again!

Re:"But I didn't actually VISIT that page"

[dirk]

Um, yes, I'd hope that Google Instant was censored because who wants to type in something innocent and have it come up with a porn site? Do you really want to be searching for something like "Sexual Harassment Lawsuits" and simply have all the sites for "sex" or "sexual" come up whenever you type them?

Yes, yes I do.

Re:Ads

[entotre]

nope,

For a few billion popular Web pages, Google will store the images of the pages. For others, it will generate the preview on the fly, in less than one-tenth of a second, Mr. Krishnan said.

source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/google-introduces-visual-previews-of-search-results/

It's automation, not laziness!

[sco08y]

"First, pressing Enter was too much work..."

No. Pressing Enter was pointless, and clicking through to the page was pointless. Obviously, if I'm taking the trouble to go to a search engine and type in words, I want to search for them. It's idiotic to have to tell the machine that. Likewise, I don't care about the links, I want the page itself, so it makes sense to pull it up right away.

The whole point of having a machine is to automate repetitive tasks, and that's what Google is doing here.

Re:It's automation, not laziness!

[blair1q]

But in this case you need a machine and an internet connection, and not inconsiderable muscle built into both.

The point of the enter button was that you could construct your query, send it once, and let the big iron at google do all the work for you, instead of plowing all the intermediate results into your battery- and bandwidth-challenged device.

So while Google is meeting your goal of automating repetitive tasks, it's also making work for itself, mostly just to impress you, but costing you more than you think in the process.

Google must be a consultant.

Re:"But I didn't actually VISIT that page"

[sootman]

It's funny. No matter what I search for, if I'm searching Google Images with Safe Search off, there's porn. And not even "Rule 34: if it exists, there's porn of it" stuff--just totally random porn that has nothing to do with my search. It's like Google is saying "I don't care what you're doing, wouldn't you rather be looking at porn?"

And the answer, of course, is usually "Um, sure, OK." And then there goes two hours.