Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo officially forces in 2010, and Google needed to come up with a new, splashy feature that would give them a clear edge over their new and formidable rivals. And that’s just what Google did!
In September 2010, the company unveiled Google Instant a new feature that will speed up searching for things on the Internet. Google Instant is aimed at speeding search results by searching as you type. The new dynamic feature, which is fully operational worldwide, is about starting the search process before the user even finish typing in the query. Google is now predicting what people will be asking for. The move is a dramatic break from the traditional Google search experience, says Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with IDC.
The intention is to compress the loop of entering queries, scanning the search results, refining the query, and checking the new results, a process that may be repeated multiple times and sometimes leads to frustration. The feature is undeniably a computer engineering tour de force, but it remains to be seen how it will be accepted by end users and what impact it will have on ad performance and efficiency, as well as on the visibility of organic search results.
Developing such a groundbreaking and bold feature shows that, at Google, the search business remains king, even when the company plays in a broad range of worldwide markers. Google is clearly doubling down on its heritage search, which it does really, really well, said analyst Charlene Li of Altimeter Group.
According to Google, Instant isn’t search as you type but rather search before you type because the engine is anticipating and predicting the most likely query the user intends to key in. As Google rolls out the feature, sophisticated users are most likely to embrace it than are ordinary ones, as the former understand the convenience and time savings while the latter may feel disconcerted, at least initially. It’s an improvement, and represents greater efficiency and convenience for people who are accustomed to using search, said analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, But there is this blanking-light effect, with the way the page changes as you proceed with the character entry, that may be a bit disordering to more ordinary users.
While many of the familiar [search] elements are still in place, the speed and steaming aspects of Google’s understanding of the user query and presentation of the results will be revolutionary, Reynolds said. The traditional Google search model was incredibly wasteful of users time. Instant will help show what the right links are more quickly he said.
Reynolds sees big potential in speeding up the process of refining queries, which he calls the “pogo stick” problem. Google Instant will help show what the right links are more quickly, he said via e-mail. Google Instant will take some getting used to. But I think most users will adjust to the changes and come to like Google’s tightening up of the search experience and all the guidance that will be presented to them.
Perhape anticipating some resistance, Google is giving users the option of turning off Google Instant, which for now will be limited to general web searches on google.com in the United States for all users, and in a few other countries such as France, Germany, and the UK for users signed into their Google accounts. It will launched later for all users worldwide, as well as in mobile devices.
Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search Products said, “The user benefits of Google Instant are many but the primary one is time saved.” Mayer announced the new feature at the company’s launch event in San Francisco in September 2010. “Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average search 2 to 5 seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up” she said.
Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said he agreed that on first thought, it might not sound like a lot of time saved, but it could be enough to give Google a leg up on its worldwide search competition. “Google did some more math and figured it would save users 3.5 billion seconds per day. I’m not sure what we’re all going to do with the extra time, but hopefully we’ll think of something.” Olds said. “This gives Google something to brag about. I think that this is a feature that Microsoft will have to add to Bing in the near future. It’s pretty useful and gives Google a clear competitive advantage.” If Microsoft adds this feature to Bing, it will only serve to dilute Google’s advantage but will really not provide Microsoft with any significant gain (see the blue box on Competitive Advantage later in this chapter).
Late 2010 was a good time for Google to fire a major shot across the bow of the new Microsoft Bing and Yahoo partnership. In August 2010, Microsoft and Yahoo finished a major integration project, which has Yahoo using Microsoft’s Bing search engine to power all searches on the various Yahoo sites. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal was aimed squarely at Google in an effort to gain competitive advantage for Microsoft and Yahoo. Neither company has had much luck tearing away at Google’s hefty lead in the worldwide search market. By merging their efforts, they’re hoping for better luck. With Google Instant, the search leader is firing back at its rivals.
“While I don’t think that Google Instant will move the bar in terms of market share, it does give Google a new feature that will be noticed by every user they have and it’ll be another reason to stick with Google for their search needs, Olds said. “We’re going to see more innovations along these lines as Google continues to develop its offerings in the face of renewed competition from combined Microsoft and Yahoo partnership.
Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, noted that despite Microsoft’s team-up with Yahoo, Google is still so far ahead of it that the innovations are simply icing on the cake. “Google is the dominant vendor in the space, which means they only need to be seen as ‘good enough’ and this goes over that admittedly low bar,” Enderle said. “But this is exactly what they need to do to hold on to their base and keep [defectors] to minimum. As long as folks think Google is good enough they won’t move and this appears to be a relatively low-risk way to do that.”