"Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful." - Tom Stocky

faster than I can type? But I want it faster than that! - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

Looks like they broke the "results per page" setting, though... it's stuck on 10 now for me whether I turn instant on or off. - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

... ah, turning Instant to on silently sets search results to ten per page, and turning Instant to off doesn't reset it back to your previously chosen value; you need to manually change that. - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

Thanks for reporting that, Andrew -- will look into it and let the team know ... - Tom Stocky

Cool, thanks. - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

So what's the next step? I think it'd be instant-messaging you with stuff you're about to search for. - Andrew C (see frenf.it)

I'm still not sure I like this 100%. What determines what "the most likely completion" is? When I type "Grymala" into the search box, for instance, rather than Google Instant showing me results for "Grymala" by default, it shows me results for "Lorraine Grymala" (which is obviously not a logical completion, since I started with "G", not "L"). Since "Lorraine Grymala" is the third result when searching for "Grymala" the old-fashioned way, I don't see how she ends up being the "most likely" result with Instant. - COMPLICATED MR. NOODLE

The autocomplete algorithms are, of course, not perfect -- but the good thing is you can just continue typing as normal if the autocompletions are wrong. Other than perhaps being a bit distracted, you shouldn't lose any time in those cases. Also, if you enable Web History then autocomplete may start including predicted queries based on searches you've done in the past. Here's more info on how autocomplete works: http://www.google.com/support... - Tom Stocky

And as with many things by Google, it doesn't work in #Opera unless you make it pretend to be Firefox. Fail. - Oblomov

Hey Oblomov, we hope to support Opera shortly after launch. - Tom Stocky