Trumpeted by those Silicon Valley boffins as the most efficient thing since slave labour, Google Instant aims to revolutionise the way information is obtained online not only by providing auto-complete suggestions, but also by performing the searches as you type. So, for example, Google will spit out pages about Canadian Tire, Costco, and Cougar, and make seven more failed attempts to predict my query, before it realizes that I’m actually looking for “Countdown to Ecstasy,” the classic Steely Dan album. I applaud the effort, Google, but I liked you better when you were a patient retriever and not an incessant yappy bastard.
Google has always been designed for speedy simplicity, but now it’s being aimed at the sluggish simpleminded, as if it doesn’t even trust its users to know what they want from it. In the official unveiling video, there’s a particular quip, spoken by an elderly man who’s aghast at how he “didn’t have to press enter” while using Google Instant, which strikes a bit off. Apparently, if you eliminate that pesky little keystroke, the population of geriatric web-surfers skyrockets. And what does that do for general productivity, you ask? Well did you know that Google Instant reduces average search time by anywhere from two to five seconds? Why, with all that new found time, I can finally finish that masterpiece I’ve been writing.
Above all else, Google Instant is one of those grandiose innovations that exists mainly to gratify itself. Any claims to increased efficiently are nullified when such time will be inevitably squandered refreshing manic Twitter feeds or wandering through Facebook. Not to mention that the weaponization of online queries can hardly be seen as an improvement. Is assaulting users with spastic stabs of haphazardly guessed information really something to be proud of? Somehow, I doubt that this is what web searches have been desperately lacking for all these years.
