

Google Instant Is Anything But a Time-Saver - loboman
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2010/09/10/google-instant-is-anything-but-a-time-saver/?single_page=true

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zbanks
I, on the contrary, trust Google here.

They're known for their extensive testing. I highly highly doubt that they
would make such a major change to their main page without knowing _for sure_
that it would be for the better.

~~~
aheilbut
I have complete trust that Google is doing their damnedest to maximize Adwords
revenues, and I highly doubt that they would have made a change like this
without knowing _for sure_ that it would increase impressions and clicks.

~~~
nostrademons
Oh, if you only knew...

I work in Search, the same department that was primarily responsible for
Instant. We're explicitly told not to worry about revenue. For a launch of
this scale, Ads is involved if only to make sure that it doesn't bankrupt the
company (it wouldn't look very good on the 10-Q to have revenue suddenly drop
to zero). But we can and have launched things that decrease revenue if doing
so is the right thing for users.

~~~
derefr
Do you try to optimize for user satisfaction, user productivity, or somewhere
in-between? A more "interactive" search—like one where you're constantly
looking down at the morphing result list as you type—can, at the same time,
increase satisfaction while being slower to use. I guess this is almost an
ethical question—do you give people what they want, or what is good for
them?—but I'm mainly wondering whether there's an established Google policy on
the matter.

~~~
diN0bot
Your definition of what is "good for them" is different than mine. Efficiency
is less important to me than feeling good, though those items are often
related.

~~~
derefr
My definition of what is "good for you" is whatever optimizes your utility
function—what you consciously, rationally like, for whatever reasons you like
it. This is a multidimensional quality: feeling good is highly weighted in
your personal utility function, for example.

However, the quantity users report on user-satisfaction surveys—"which is
better, in your opinion"—is basically whatever your subconscious heuristics
tell you is better. If you were consciously presented with the choice _before_
your brain had become entrained to either alternative, you would perhaps
respond differently. People don't "like" things that are unfamiliar, even if
they have more benefits, and could normally be convinced of this—this is why
people react negatively every time Facebook changes its UI, and why New Coke
would only have worked if there had never been a Classic Coke to compare it
to. People "like" addictive drugs, fatty foods, etc., even when they know that
these will _decrease_ their net happiness over time.

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streamline
The only thing that i care about is that it helps a lot for doing incremental
searches, e.g. if you are searching for someone, you can add keywords like
their occupation, university expertise and it works really well.

most of the ppl crying over this are doing this because now there SEO is all
messed up and people can look for things that they want much more efficiently.
Consider so many people who rather looked at results that they got rather than
modifying their searches. also people will choose top 5-6 results, so if your
results are not in top 5-6 they are worth much less.

All this talk is nothing but google hate. if you just dont want to use this
feature press enter every time you type.

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olegkikin
I have two problems with it

1) It makes search slower on my slow netbook (all these DOM operations aren't
free, you know). So while I type some long phrase, Google does all these
meaningless searches (that I don't even look at), and slows down the browser
tremendously. (I use Chrome on the netbook).

2) I cannot turn it off. I tried. I went to "Search settings", selected "Do
not use Google Instant", saved the settings. It's still on. When I go to
settings again, "Use Google Instant" is still checked.

~~~
_delirium
> meaningless searches (that I don't even look at)

One of my complaints is that I _do_ look at those searches, which derail me.
Those results, along with some of the completions, are often related and
interesting, but not actually what I was looking for, so I go off on a
distraction quest with "oh, that's interesting", before I finish actually
searching for what I had intended to search for. Possibly a personal failing,
but I definitely so far feel like Google Instant is adding one more
distraction to an already-distracting internet.

It sometimes feels like a Google Instant version of the six degrees of
Wikipedia game: which topics completely unrelated to what I'm supposed to be
doing can I reach via one- to three-word prefixes of search phrases I'm
legitimately looking for as part of something productive?

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Groxx
Actually... I think they may be right. Though I have my own theories as to
why:

More results = more time _reading_ results, = more ad impressions. If you hit
two letters and it seems to have decent results, you're probably going to look
to see if it _is_ what you wanted, rather than finishing your search term.
Good for Google's income.

In addition, on the other side of the equation: if you don't know _exactly_
what you're finding, more results more quickly means you're more likely to
find exactly what you were looking for... which is good for Google, because
you'll come back, and good for _you_ , because you found what you wanted.

More time is more time, but I typically visit Google for all of 5 seconds.
Having it take 10 seconds to find better results (and in a few wide-ranging
searches, I _definitely_ got better results due to the immediate feedback) is
worth it to me.

~~~
il
Google gets paid for clicks, not impressions. As long as the same percentage
of searches terminate in clicks on ads their revenue will remain unaffected.

The only conceivable impact on ads is that traffic will shift from long-tail
to shorter keywords as people find what they need earlier in the search
process. The exact impact this will have on click prices is unclear.

~~~
Groxx
Thought I saw somewhere that they were defining an ad impression as one which
was on-screen for 3 seconds during an Instant search. That would seem to imply
they're extracting _some_ value from impressions alone.

Could've misinterpreted, though.

~~~
immad
That is how they define an impression in their reporting but they are still
payed on a click basis.

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WingForward
1) Who searches on "sausage" or "Sausalito"? I might search for 'sausage
making quote' or 'Sausalito italian restaurant'. And while I type that I get
faded type ahead in my search box and results popping up on the screen.
Annoying.

2) As long as I'm criticizing, I also use quotes in about half my searches,
but Google's type ahead feature strips them out rendering the function
useless.

3) OK, a rave about Google's search tools...being able to search in past 24
hours, week, month, year, etc is wonderful when trying to find an answer to a
specific technical problem.

But Instand? I turned it off within a couple hours. It's too distracting.

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djhworld
I hardly ever use the Google homepage to search anyway, I always use the
address bar in Chrome so this new feature is largely irrelevant to me.

~~~
notahacker
it's also largely irrelevant to the many people here who type faster than
Google can serve them results

