Google Instant does search as you type

Google has launched Google Instant, an interface and infrastructure enhancement that displays search results as the user types in the query. The company announced the new feature in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Conceptually similar to Google Suggest - now renamed Autocomplete - which shows suggestions as a query is entered, Google Instant does the actual search with each keystroke. as well as showing suggestions for what it thinks the search query will be, once complete. Users can also scroll through different predictions and see the searches for each.

The company estimates that this will save between two and five seconds for each query, and once all Google users are using Google Instant the cumulative time saving will be eleven hours per second.

Google Instant is available from today, the company says, for all users of google.com in English, and to all signed-in users in Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Italy and the UK.

"On the back-end, Instant is pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure. For typical searches, we estimate we’ll show between five and seven times as many results pages as before.", Google said in a statement. "We hope to roll-out Instant during the coming weeks to signed-out users as well, and we hope to expand to other languages and domains in the coming weeks and month".

Google Labs also unveiled Google Scribe, a predicative text editor. If you pause while typing, it suggests a drop-down list of ten options, and if you drop the bookmarklet in your Bookmarks or Favourites toolbar you can use it in any online text entry screen.