As we are anticipating Chrome 8 to make its first appearance, we noticed that Google has enabled Instant Search right within its Google Chrome browser. This may not be such a big deal, but our personal perception tells us that the Google has just removed one essential and mainly psychological barrier to its search engine and eliminates the need to visit the familiar Google homepage ever again.
Google Instant Search may have much more dramatic implications than what we have seen and heard so far. In the end, it may not be so much about speed, but much more about playing the advantage of market dominance at the right time and take its service to a territory where its biggest rival Microsoft/Yahoo cannot follow.
There is a new switch for Chrome: It allows users to activate Instant Search from within Chrome. The switch -enable-match-preview allows users to use Instant Search from the URL bar. Simply type a search term in the URL bar and Chrome will automatically load a page with dynamic search results. The current feature is slightly different from the Google home page, as the URL bar drop down field still lists suggestions and not “I’m Feeling Lucky” results.
Google has clearly invested some brainwork in this new approach to search at any given time, without the need to visit Google’s Homepage. You will notice that the search results page is displayed as a separate area within your current browser window, which means that you are not leaving your current page, even if you can use the full feature set of Google Search at the same time. Clicking into the search portion of the window will forward you to the search results page. If you delete the search phrase from the URL bar, the search results page disappears and you return to your previous page.
It's a bit difficult to see, but if you look closely, you see ConceivablyTech on top and Google Instant Search below.
It is clearly an experimental feature that is everything else but stable. For example, clicking into the active window while running an instant search at the same time consistently crashed Chrome on our two test systems. If you choose to click into the search results, there is no direct path “back” to your original page. You will have to type that URL again or use the history page to return to wherever you came from.
In our testing over a few hours, we found that we all did not return to the Google homepage anymore, while all of us so far had preferred Google.com as our default homepage when the browser was launched or a new tab was opened. Conceivably, you could claim that Google.com (or any other search engine) has always been deeply integrated into Chrome due to its URL bar search feature. However, searching through the URL bar always required the user to press the Enter key, which is now not necessary anymore. You automatically search and load a search results page as you type. That could be annoying and not desirable in some cases (for example if you your URL anyway) and especially on mobile devices as the bandwidth usage is likely to skyrocket.
But why would you return to Google.com ever again? You have the search engine at your fingertips at any given time. The implications could be dramatic. If Instant Search catches on, other search engines could be at a severe disadvantage as this feature is, of course, not supported for other search engines within Chrome. Also think about the massive implication for advertising. Google will generate advertising revenues every time you type something in the URL bar, even if it is just a domain you already know and you are not necessarily searching. However, to be fair, if you are typing the URL of a site that is in your history and you complete the domain name by pushing the right arrow key, you are guided to that destination immediately without a detour via Google Instant Search.
Overall, the current implementation may not sit well with Adsense advertisers as it erases ad value on Google Search. Goolg has some fine tuning to do, but the opportunity Google has created with Instant Search is staggering. The company would be dumb if it did not to integrate this feature into its Chrome (8?) browser.
The Instant Search switch, which you will have to add to the launch line in the Properties tag of the Chrome shortcut (example: C:\Users\Harry\Desktop\chrome\chrome.exe -enable-match-preview), only works with the latest Chrome 7 (still offered under the Chromium label) nightly builds and not with the current Chrome 6 stable version. We tested this feature with Chromium 7.0.524.0.
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