Google Instant

[DuckReconMajor]

http://www.google.com/instant/

First change Google's made in a while that I've really, really, liked.

My fingers are tingling!

edit: okay something to get used to: pressing down arrow to a suggestion and hitting right arrow key now does "I'm feeling lucky". Hit Enter instead.

[40oz]

Yeah it's pretty intense. You end up searching for cool things by accident a lot of the time. I like it. I also like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" shortcut. I always been meaning to use that button but I always click search instead. Even if I always click the first link first.

[Ralphis]

Hasn't this been on google for a few years or am I missing something?

[DuckReconMajor]

Clearly. Go to google (not a search bar, the actual site) and type stuff.

[Ralphis]

Yea, I've seen this for a few years. I even heard some dude on comedy central joking about this in his stand up. UNLESS, whatever you're talking about just isn't working for me right now...

[DuckReconMajor]

this

posted two days ago, unless you're in some sort of super secret Google beta club

[40oz]

I think you're missing something. I think what Daniel Tosh is referring to is your Internet History when you type something in the URL window. For example, when I press the letter U, the first thing that comes up is ultra-pornstars.com

In google, ordinarily you had to type a full word or phrase, then press enter. In google instant, it does a search for your word with every letter you type without hitting enter.

[Ralphis]

If we're talking about the drop down suggestions, I've had those on my google page for years. The gray text showing up as you type is new, but it doesn't seem like a very significant change to me.

[Aliotroph?]

Watch the results under the grey text as a you type. :p

[gggmork]

Those stupid code things they do are insane viral advertising. On slashdot, reddit, etc, all the top stories are like 'google did pacman on their logo today guyz', 'here's how to do their moving ball thingy in html5!'. And to think its all probably just to compete with bing's 'omg we have REAL background pictures made of 100% real pixels in OUR superior 'decision engine''
The instant thing is ok I guess; now people can more 'instant'ly search for your scanned naked body which is probably in their database, and employers can more instantly search for that time you wrote 'fuck' 15 years ago to bar you from employment and probably put you on some sex offender list.

[exp(x)]

I disabled it. It's distracting.

[GreyGhost]

From Google's blurb...
"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."

Time that can be put to better use if you're amongst the 25% searching for porn. ;-)

[DuckReconMajor]

gggmork said:

The instant thing is ok I guess; now people can more 'instant'ly search

This isn't about that. This is about those times when you don't exactly know what to enter into Google, so you can see immediately how different words affect the search results.

[Planky]

Ralphis said:

If we're talking about the drop down suggestions, I've had those on my google page for years. The gray text showing up as you type is new, but it doesn't seem like a very significant change to me.

Only thing I've noticed is the 'Google Search' and the 'Im feeling lucky' buttons added to the drop down.

I'm not sure why this is being toted as the newest and greatest thing...

[Bucket]

This might be useful if I want to search for something with a very long name but I only know the first three letters of it. That is to say, not very useful.
In any other case, it's just slowing me down.

[Nomad]

This google instant business doesn't seem to work for me. I type and I just get the drop down box. Where is this instant search results I'm supposed to have? Does it not work in Firefox or something?

[DuckReconMajor]

Works fine in Firefox for me. Do you have Google's scripts enabled? Or like cookies or clear cache or something?

[Technician]

I assumed this was a new form of Google, where you just added hot water to it and boom instant results.

[Jodwin]

Technician said:

I assumed this was a new form of Google, where you just added hot water to it and boom instant results.

Yeah, I thought they had started selling noodles too. :(

Anyway, where is the instant? It's no different than what I'm used to seeing save for moving the search buttons elsewhere.

[Aliotroph?]

It works great for me and in Firefox. It doesn't work on Google.ca yet, but that page has a link to google.com and it works there. It's not very revolutionary; it's just what search engines should do.

[EarthQuake]

It instantly broke Chrome.

[myk]

It doesn't work for me. It must depend on some stuff installed on Windows (when I'm browsing with 98.) [Or so I thought - see below.]

For K-Meleon (my main browser) the Google Instant page says:

Google Instant is not available for your web browser.
Please upgrade to the latest version of a modern browser to use Google Instant.

Please? I'm supposed to be doing someone else a favor here? (It's what companies say when humans would say "sorry".)

For Opera, which is technically a "modern browser," I get:

Google Instant requires Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac or Internet Explorer v8.

So I open Firefox v3.6.6 and don't get the highlighted message at the top, but when I click Try It Now, I get the normal Goggle functionality, without any Instant magic.

Edit:

Aliotroph? said:
It doesn't work on Google.ca yet, but that page has a link to google.com and it works there.

Ah, that was it; I was at google.com.ar. Going to goolge.com made it work in Firefox.

[kristus]

google.com always redirects me instantly to google.se

[myk]

Don't you get a link to google.com on the lower right, as underlined below?

[Gez]

Note that "instant" doesn't work if javascript is blocked.