So yesterday, shortly after I finished writing last night’s post on HMTL5, my girlfriend messaged me and asked me what the heck was going on with Google. For those not living in US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Russia, Google Instant was rolled out last night. Seeing as I’m a person who uses Google and Scroogle a lot, I decided to try spoofing my IP via proxy to try it out before it comes to Canada officially. And what I saw officially makes me crept out, and very happy that it hasn’t rolled out into Canada officially yet, mostly because I’m not a big fan of it.
The first thing I’d like to note for those who haven’t had a chance to try out Google Instant is that this is my opinion of what I feel when I use it, and you might actually like this feature more then yours truly. However, I find it a waste of my time, and these are the reasons I’m not going to be using it.
The first thing I’d like to point out about Google Instant is the instant “creepy” factor, of Google trying to actively predict on what you’re trying to search. Now, don’t get me wrong, we use Google so we can figure out something, and the closer Google can get to our actual result, the better. After all, that’s how Google’s worked for more then the past ten years. But now with Google Instant, we have a new way of searching: Google will look up every letter on top what you’re spelling. So if you’re trying to look up “Richard Stallman’s contribution to Windows” (here’s a hint: none), it will start looking up things while you type that all out. “R”, “Ri”, “Ric”, etc, until you get the proper search term you want to see. Which is all fine and good, but what if you’re trying to look up Justin Lang. Guess who takes number one spot instead?
Um… no.
If I’m looking up something that has nothing to do with what Google pulled up, I find that annoying. And if I happened to be look up for Beiber (if I ever did, I would shoot myself), then that would be completely creepy. And if I absolutely wanted to type anything at all… I could have typed it faster because I have a high enough WPM count, something most geeks I know of are able to say with ease.
Now, I have to give marks to Google for trying something new… it’s not every day someone’s trying to improve on search engines, especially because they are mostly pretty static. And there will be the people that will love this feature, don’t get me wrong. Personally, I find it a pain in the rear end, but that’s my two cents. Some people will certainly find this new feature of Google highly useful, which is exactly what Google’s hoping. And who knows? It might be a lot more successful then Google’s Buzz. Whichever way you swing it, Google Instant is very unusual, very different, and might just be the thing for you. It is possible to disable it if you don’t want to use it, via the Preferences, but try it before you do. No way to find out based on my review: try it yourself.
– Try Google Instant – (Free!)