I recently wrote a post posing the question “Is Google becoming a former supermodel“. Here is an excerpt from that post

“In the rapidly changing world of the Internet, Google has become one of its superstars…Growth though is slowing and competition is on the up…Google stocks have hit the wall in the past 12 months and under performed the broader market. So has Google run out of runway, can it compete in this Brave New World? Is this supermodel now destined only to make cameo appearances on Hollywood movies, or in MBA terms, has Google moved from being a Star and become a Cash Cow?”

The question I was asking was motivated by the fact that the internet is moving rapidly away from traditional search. In answer to my question, in serendipitous way, and perhaps by even reading my mind (see below) Google announced yesterday that it was launching Google Instant a predictive text search feature. With Google’s latest innovation, it would appear that there is in deed still a lot of sexiness left in this supermodel

This is how I understand it works: As you type your search Google will begin to predict the search you are looking for and answers will begin appearing even before you have finished typing your search. Initially it will appear that Google is reading your mind, in reality it’s just being very clever. The boffins at Google believe that predictive searching will be a hit because it will save us bundles of time, even though it may be a little spooky at first.
The new search mode will roll out starting to today in the United States on all the major browsers. In the coming week, it will come to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Russia. Mobile is coming in the next few months.

You can find more information about Google Instant on Google’s webpage here and below is an excellent article on the launch cover in Fortune Magazine

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Google Instant
Posted by Michael V. Copeland, Senior Writer Fortune Magazine
September 8, 2010 2:11 PM

The search leader unveils what it hopes is a fundamental change to how we search online: Search at the speed of thought.

If you already thought Google could read your mind, the search Giant made it official Wednesday with the launch of Google Instant. “It’s not quite psychic but it is very clever,” said Othar Hansson, one of the Google engineers that developed the new search mode, to a crowd of press, analysts and Googlers at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Wednesday morning.

Part of what Google Instant does is predict the search terms you are going to type. A single letter “w” might auto-complete to “weather.” Weather results, based on your location, then instantly show up on the search page – no hitting return or clicking on the search button. “We can predict what you are likely to type and bring you those results in real-time,” said Google’s head of search Marrissa Mayer. “It is a much faster search, an easier search, we can provide results in real-time before you have had a chance to type your query.”

As the name “Instant” suggests, Google is all about making its core search product faster. “Never underestimate the importance of fast,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt reminded people at a recent appearance in Berlin. According to Google the typical person takes more than nine seconds to enter a search term. It takes only 300 milliseconds for Google’s algorithms to digest the query and its servers to return results. In other words, people type very slowly and our sluggish performance accounts for the vast majority of time it takes to do a search.

Turns out, however, we read fast.

Google’s team found that typing typically occurs at a rate 300 milliseconds between keystrokes. It takes only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time) to glance at another part of the page. So we read much faster than we type. With instant results flowing down the screen as you begin to type, Google anticipates people will be able to quickly scan for the result they want, saving two to five seconds per search. If all of Google’s 1 billion users per week use Google Instant, Google estimates this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day, or 11 hours saved every second.

The new search mode will roll out starting to today in the United States on all the major browsers. In the coming week, it will come to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Russia. Mobile is coming in the next few months.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the launch of Google Instant

With all the results flowing so quickly, an obvious question is whether it changes the number and value of clicks. Google’s Mayer said the Instant feature is not likely to change things for advertisers. The way Google serves and ranks ads will not change. “Overall clicks to a site are likely to remain constant,” Mayer said. What might change, and to Google’s benefit, is the number of searches people do. “If it is faster and easier, we are likely to see people do more searches and take on harder problems,” Hansson said.

What Google hopes is the Instant approach becomes akin to power steering in cars, something we can’t do without. Whether the public agrees, or finds it simply creepy, will become apparent very quickly. During a Q&A session following the main presentation Google co-founder Sergey Brin took a seat on stage. Brin made it clear that approaches like Google Instant, that bring technology closer to our everyday tasks and make our interactions with all kinds of computing devices more intimate, are part of a trend that will continue and gather steam.

“I do think it’s a little but of a new dawn in computing,” said Brin, sporting the propeller head’s shoe of a choice, rubbery gloves for your feet. “This is a piece of a really changing landscape in computing, the things that you are going to see come out in the next decade from Google and other companies are really going to change the way you interact with computing devices.”

Dean van Leeuwen is a partner of TomorrowToday International, a dynamic organisation that is assisting both large and small companies navigate the rich streams of the new world of work. He is recognised as a creative and strategic thinker with an ability to influence individuals and teams to explore ‘outside the box’ options. TomorrowToday have several entertaining and enlightening multimedia presentations that explore themes relevant to customer experience, talent, diversity and leadership.

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