Google’s press event will be kicking off shortly, and we’ll be providing some shiny live coverage. So stay tuned!
I believe you’ll also be able to stream the event on Google’s YouTube channel, but I could be wrong.
[ Google’s YouTube Channel | Opt-in to Google Instant ]
9:30 PST: Google is playing some eerie new age music to intro the event…
9:32 PST: Really Google? Eerie music is still playing.
9:34 PST: Still nothing but music, but here’s an interesting page on Google’s site for Google Instant.
9:36 PST: Gabriel Stricker is on the stage now! Explaining how to connect to the WiFI.
9:37 PST: Now he’s explaining why they do these events.
9:39: PST: Marissa Mayer is on stage.
9:40 PST: 1 billion users visit Google search per week.
9:41 PST: Google rolls out 100s of new features every year, 500 so far this year.
9:48 PST: Talking about information gathering over the years, how it has evolved from taking weeks to find information, to days, to hours, and now to just seconds.
9:50 PST: Average search takes 25 seconds. Even with autocomplete.
9:51 PST: Search time is limited by the “speed of thinking”. Google Instant is in fact the new product.
9:52 PST: She’s demoing Google Instant.
9:53 PST: She’s searching for the name of a Matissa painting, and results show up in real time, before she even presses Enter. Name of the of painting is “Femme Au Chapeau”.
9:54 PST: Says that Google Instant isn’t search as you type, it’s search before you type. She says there’s almost a physic element to it, predicting what you’re likely to search for.
9:55 PST: Demoing more searches.
9:56 PST: She says “We’re really ultimately excited about this”. Uh, ok…
9:57 PST: Google Instant launches today for Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 8.
9:58 PST: Roll out starts for the US, with international support later on.
9:59 PST: Google Instant will save you 2-5 seconds per query.
10 PST: Johanna Wright and Othar Hansson are on stage.
10:01 PST: They’re going to demo three primary features.
10:02 PST: First gear, instant results, second is predictions, the third is “scroll to search”.
10:03 PST: Othar says “It’s not quite physic, but it’s very clever”.
10:06 PST: Eric Zeman makes a good point on Twitter. “With Chrome, I do all my google searching in the address bar. No Google Instant there. Have to use Google.com? That’s already too much work”
Guessing it’ll be added to Chrome down the road.
10:07 PST: Othar explains that he recently bought a new bike, and test-drove it by riding up a hill. It went twice as fast as his old bike because it was a newer, lighter bike. “That’s what we’re shooting for with Google Instant.”
10:11 PST: Giving a sneak peak of Google Instant for Mobile. Demoing it on Android, of course.
Sorry our connection flaked out on us.
10:25 PST: Lots of technical details explaining various research they did to refine Google Instant.
10:26 PST: “We work on search because it’s an absolutely fascinating problem…and because we’re engineers…”
10:27 PST: “Most importantly, we work on search because we believe it matters to people. It matters to us.”
“We’re constantly working to improve search.”
10:29 PST: Marissa is back on stage.
“We feel that Google Instant is a quantum leap into the future:”
10:31 PST: In 1965, Bob Dylan went electric, that inspired Google’s engineers. Showing a Bob Dylan / Google Mashup video.
10:33 PST: Q&A session is starting.
Q: Robert Scoble asks when this will hit browsers, like Chrome.
A: They’re working on it. Later this year hopefully.
Q: How will this impact ads / impressions.
A: No real change, but they’ve added a 3 second pause which counts as an impression.
Q: How will this interact with Google Search History?
A: Searches where you clicked or paused for three seconds will show up in Search History.
Q: Is there a blacklist? Irina Slutsky’s name doesn’t autocomplete.
A: Google cares about family safety, so they do censor results at least until you press Enter.
Q: How much personal information is required for this to work?
A: No change, weather is tied to your IP location. Which is information they already record.
Q&A is still going on, but we’re headed out. You can follow the rest on Google’s YouTube channel.