Google Instant Previews comes to Android and Apple iOS smartphones and tablets, providing another efficiency layer for devices with smaller screens.
Google March 8 made its Instant Previews search snippets
technology available on mobile smartphones and tablets running Google's Android
2.2 and Apple's iOS 4.0 and later versions of each platform.
Available since last November, Google Instant Previews lets
users visualize results before they click on them to save time. The technology
builds on the
Google Instant predictive search technology the company created to make search
speedier for users.
Instant Previews is another stab at boosting search
efficiency. Users type in a query using Google Instant and Instant Previews
provides a snapshot of a search result, highlighting the most relevant sections
in less than one-tenth of a second.
Users will click once on the magnifying glass next to the
title of any search result to pop out a visual overview of the page on the
right. The tool is especially useful for discerning searchers who have an idea
of what content they're hunting for.
Now Instant Previews is available for Apple's iPhone,
iPad and iPod touch, as well as Android gadgets, such as the Motorola Atrix 4G
and Motorola Xoom tablet, in 38 languages.
"Perhaps you're looking for an article, a step-by-step
instructions list, or a product comparison chart -- with Instant Previews, you
can easily spot pages with the right content without having to navigate back
and forth between Websites and search results,"
said Brian Ngo, a software engineer for Google's mobile search team.
Android and iOS device users who want to try Instant
Previews can search Google.com and tap on the magnifying glass next to any
search result.
A side-by-side comparison view of the Web page previews
for the first page of search results will slide out to the right. The user may
then tap on a preview to go to the Website.
Ngo said Google will also show previews of mobile Web
pages, when they are available. See Google's mobile Instant Previews demo
here.
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