Google Instant Search Demo: A First Look at Speedier Search

by Clint Boulton

Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, who said Google now serves 1 billion users per week with its search engine, unveils the Google Instant logo at MOMA.

Users tend to spend 9 seconds on average entering a search query into Google, said Mayer. Users then spend an average of 15 seconds picking their result.

Mayer wants to search for Henry Matisse’s “Woman with a Hat.” She first searches the museum, SF MOMA, typing in just “SFM” before Google Instant recognizes her intent is to find “SFMOMA.” Mayer completes her search.

By hitting Tab and adding the word “woman” to her query “SFMOMA,” Mayer pinpoints the painting, known in French as “Femme au Chapeau.” This all happens in seconds, with results flitting across the screen with each keystroke, trying to find her intended query. She didn’t even hit return.

What if Mayer didn’t want to search for “Femme au Chapeau?” What if she was looking for “Femme au Chocolat”? Mayer simply hit the down arrow key to bump down to her search query of choice.

Instant also works with the popular book “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” The service helps users easily differentiate the book and movie.

Instant helps users disambiguate between the Addams Family movie and the popular new musical.

The technology also predicts the weather. Well, not really, but it tries to predict what the weather is based on the IP address of the computer a user is performing their search on.

Google actually joked about offering this technology 10 years ago for April Fool’s Day, calling it the Mentalplex. Who’s laughing now?

Google Instant will be available on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 beginning Sept. 8.

However, Google Instant is limited to the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. The tool will come to more countries and platforms in the coming months.

Google is always trying to port its search and Web services to mobile devices. Instant is no exception; it will arrive on Android smartphones and likely iPhone and other mobile platforms later this year.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page love Google Instant. What else do you need to know?