Commentary

Google Instant: Our Long-Awaited, Just-in-Time Serendipity?

by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, September 9, 2010

Yesterday, Google announced the formal launch of Google Instant, a new feature in its core search product that automatically provides real-time recommendations as you type the letters and words in your search query. Basically, Google tries to guess what you're looking for and speed you along on your search by providing dynamically changing strings of potential search terms that you can choose. Previously, Google didn't really start working on the search until after you hit the enter key.

Is this a big deal? If you're Google, it certainly is. If only a small number of searchers choose the engine's "recommended" searches, it will probably gain enormous savings in computing time and resources. If Google Instant improves the user experience so even a tiny fraction of folks use Google for more searches, this would have enormous revenue implications. That's the nice thing about having a massive, dominant, cash-producing machine running at enormous scale; even the tiniest tweaks can yield outsize returns.

Is this a big deal for everyone else? I don't think so, at least not yet. However, I do think that the application of dynamic, incremental personalization and recommendation is going to have an enormous impact on digital media and marketing over the next several years. You don't have to subscribe to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's somewhat extreme predictions about the future of robotic serendipity, and the notion that machines will soon know more about what we want then we will ourselves.

Clearly, there is more relevant and valuable information in the world than there is the time and attention for any of us to consume and digest it. Anything that can significantly improve that process -- even incrementally -- will find value in the marketplace. I believe that we will see a number of different applications of this "just-in-time serendipity" technology in places beyond search. We already see it in productivity tools. Spell-checkers use it. So do systems that try to predict what we're trying to type, such as the auto-suggest on the iPhone.

Many of the display ads that we see online are guided by data and predictive technologies that try to better predict what we might respond to. So, too, is dynamic personalization used on headlines and links presented on many news sites. TiVo, Amazon and Netflix have been offering personal recommendations for some time, and certainly can evolve those to relative real time fairly easily.

However, I believe that we're still a long way away from a world where we each receive fewer, more relevant ads and more awareness of all the information and entertainment out there that we might enjoy. Much has been promised over the years when it comes to providing people with dynamic serendipity -- and a lot less clutter -- in digital media offerings, but delivering on these promises continues to fall short. Google Instant is at least a tangible and substantial step in that direction. What do you think?

google, search

11 comments about "Google Instant: Our Long-Awaited, Just-in-Time Serendipity?".

Check to receive email when comments are posted.

David Carlick from Carlick, September 9, 2010 at 2:15 p.m.
It is a useful and even welcome feature. (Shopping engines may have a tough time with it, I think, given the proliferation of relevant offers to a product-oriented query.) If you walk into a restaurant you like and the host welcomes you by name and serves up your favorite drink, all cool. No big privacy violation, in fact, much appreciated by most of us. So why shouldn't search engines and web sites be just as personal? We'll get used to it, ice cream scanner paranoia notwithstanding.
Reply

Kenn Gorman, September 9, 2010 at 2:25 p.m.

Great idea if you are Google and want to be able to push people to a specific site. Not so good for people (especially young students) who believe that Google is the internet - but that is something that we teachers need to discuss and inform.
My question is this - how many people will see this as annoying and move to another search engine? Will other search engines recognize the "annoyance factor" and start marketing themselves as the search engine that does what you want not what it wants?

Aaron B. from AnimationInsider.net, September 9, 2010 at 2:28 p.m.

I found it a little annoying... as if I were speaking on the telephone, but someone else was standing in the room right next to me, trying to engage me in the exact same conversation. Just a bunch of noise.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia, September 9, 2010 at 2:48 p.m.

I agree that a number of folks may find the feature annoying, just as other folks will find it very valuable. To deal with the former, I suspect that Google will continue to make the recommendation engine an option on search, not a default forced on everyone. That way, everyone will get what they want.

John Jainschigg from World2Worlds, Inc., September 9, 2010 at 2:54 p.m.

I think this is a very problematic feature.

First, their UI for this thing stinks. Touch-typists watch the screen, and to see all that stuff suddenly jumping and popping while you try to enter a search phrase leads to keystroke errors, hesitation, breaks in thought-flow -- all the things advanced searchers don't want. This morning, when I tried it for the first time, the actual _input field_ moved (from the center of the page to the top left) as I typed ... This is VERY 'not-good-UI.'

Second, as Paula says, who cares what their software thinks I want to find? The reason I fell in love with Google in the first place was that these folks had indexed the universe so that someone like me can frame a nuanced query and find exactly what I want, instantly, out of all the world's knowledge. This seems very antithetical to that austere style of using Google. Antithetical also to the conscious process of iterating queries as you figure out "how the world talks about and labels Topic X." And frankly, it seems a lot less fun than simply poking around in the citadel of human reason, without the dubious help of a (possibly dumb, almost certainly corrupt) tour-guide.

Finally ... gag. Paid search I can deal with. This I can't. I mean, c'mon. A bazillion dollars a year should be enough for them that they don't have to save compute-time and toss commercials up in my face as I type. Ugh.

Jeff Einstein from The Brothers Einstein, September 9, 2010 at 3:27 p.m.

My problem with manufactured just-in-time serendipity is the extent to which it destroys real serendipity. True, a ten-lane super freeway will get you where you want to go much quicker than a wooded back road. But where's the adventure? Where's the wonderment? Where's the chance encounter, color and texture embodied in every wrong turn we make? How else will we learn anything once we surrender the right to fail? The price to eliminate uncertainty from our lives may be far more than we're willing to pay.

Dave Morgan from Simulmedia, September 9, 2010 at 3:35 p.m.

Jeff, very good point. In fact, once serendipity becomes "manufactured" - and an expected service - it probably stops being serendipitous.

Amy Fanter from Odds On Promotions, September 9, 2010 at 4:58 p.m.

I agree whole-heartedly with Aaron and John J. It's absolutely distracting. After my first search this AM I turned the blasted thing off ...

R.J. Lewis from e-Healthcare Solutions, LLC, September 9, 2010 at 9:23 p.m.

Remember when email used to be timely and relevant? Messages seemed like they were made just for you (because they were). An overload of "relevance" equals irrelevance.

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, September 9, 2010 at 10:44 p.m.

This is also more of a control issue. Conspirists Unite. Google can tell you what your want and you fall for it. If anyone thinks this can't happen, just tune to Fox News and listen to the "wing nuts" and their followers. 2000 + years of following that which benefits the profiteers.

Ivan Chalif, September 11, 2010 at 3:17 p.m.

I am interested to see how this feature continues to evolve. Its is clearly an extension of Google Suggest, which I found to be a very useful feature, but I am not so sure about this new one.

In its current form, I found Google Instant to be a poor user experience. It's too distracting to see the page constantly change as the search engine tries to figure out what I want. Google was smart enough to allow this to be configured by the user, so if you don't like it, you can turn it off.

It might require some tweaking of the algorithm so that it doesn't redraw the results page with each new character or to only provide results when there are significant pauses in text entry. Someone rapidly typing an entry probably isn't looking for this level of assistance.

As for who it truly benefits, it's pretty clear that it feeds the Adwords engine by allowing more opportunities to display ads for a single search. It's debatable how valuable those first impressions are if they aren't there when the searcher looks up at the screen.

Ivan Chalif
TheProductolgist.com