Zeb White

Staff Writer, Asst. Business Manager

Search findings: about 37,000,000 results (0.20 seconds)

Just when you thought searching the internet couldn’t get any faster, tech giant Google introduced a new service called Google Instant that aims to accelerate the process even further by predicting what you will search for as you type and finding relevant results.

Released this week, the feature reduces average search time (including typing a query and choosing a link) from 25 seconds to 15-17 seconds, according to Google. That may not sound like much, but it could give Google a competitive edge over Microsoft’s Bing search engine. If all Google users globally use Instant, then 3.5 billion seconds would be saved every day.

Google said that Instant uses the same algorithms as its familiar Autocomplete function, which has been integrated into Google for several years. Autocomplete and Instant base predictions off of popularity of search items. For example, a lot of people search “weather”, so you local forecast and links to weather websites appear instantly as soon as you type in the letter “w”.

Instant is currently available in the United States and six European countries, and only works on newer browsers (Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Safari 5, etc.). Check it out on google.com/instant.