Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#151

Post by wodenokoto » Wed, Jul 26, 2017, 11:54 PM UTC

x1798DE wrote: post #13

This is awesome news. It was always a pain to set up my search engine to have instant off - and of course instant turns back on if you performed a second search on the results page of the no-instant page. I have never once had my search experience enhanced by this anti-feature, and most of the time it's a hindrance, because I'll start reading the search results, then based on that come up with a new query and start t…

> In non-instant world, maybe 60% of the time I'll end up finding what I want to click on as I continue to scan the page, then stop typing and click on that

My problem is I look at keywords from the results and want to use them to refine my search, and as soon as I type the first letter of my refinement, I lose access to the words I need.

And as you say, results on half words have never helped anyone, and there are already suggestions for what these half words might expand to.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#152

Post by puzzle » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 12:23 AM UTC

seanp2k2 wrote: post #62

puzzle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course she wasn't involved in making things work efficiently and reliably, since that never was her responsibility, but the whole reason all of that had to happen was because she decided to turn what normally would be one of the many, many cool internal demos into a public, differentiating feature (and got signoff from upper management). I'll miss Instant on desktop, for the record. It was a great achievement to i…

(Reached reply depth) 7x infra to support it...what was the value prop for this?

I have no idea where that number comes from. I seem to remember that a naive implementation would have required 10x or so the existing resources (proportional to the characters in the average query at the time... We know they've been getting longer over the years). But that's not at all what was released. Also remember that this is just the serving path. Crawling is not affected, while for indexing...it depends.

My service did not get 7x the resources for launch. We did bring up more capacity, but we also improved things here and there. That's work that would have been needed anyway.

Last but not least, there were infrastructure improvements that helped reduce resources in search and other products. Bob Wyman's LinkedIn page says that his team helped with Instant, but also saved AdSense 100k+ cores, while increasing serving capacity and reducing latency.

As for the value: speed, differentiation and sheer coolness.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#153

Post by c5sc63z2 » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

Shank wrote: post #48

Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I really liked instant. I remember turning in instant from the omnibox in chrome, too. It showed that Google was at least willing to innovate in the search space -- and for some of us, it was a huge positive to have.

I really liked instant too, except I just liked it for the keyboard shortcuts. After submitting a query, I could press then use the up/down arrows to select, then + to open the links in a new tab.

Does anyone know of Google search keyboard shortcuts even without instant?

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#154

Post by silverbax88 » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #146

silverbax88 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that, because that's what I do. But my point is, I shouldn't have to know how to 'hack' around the browser just to use a textbox. That's really inferior UX design. I shouldn't even be thinking about any of that, I should be thinking about what the Google results are, not how to use Google.

What are you hacking around? Why not just use the address bar all the time?

Then why does Google have a textbox on the app? Why not just put a blank page as their front page? And why does the textbox only suddenly move your input from a web app element to a browser element in only this one instance?

What solution does this solve for me, the user, to have to determine that in this one instance, the textbox can't be used, but on literally every other application out of millions of web applications, text boxes work correctly?

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#155

Post by cwilkes » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:43 AM UTC

puzzle wrote: post #27

Coincoin wrote: post #15

Good riddance. This was a marketing feature more than anything else so google could boast about how fast their search engine was. However, it always had tons of usability problems for no added benefit to the user, especially when refining a previous search, or trying to retype some funky word you found in the results.

Yes, part of it was marketing, but there were benefits, too, e.g. for slow typers, which of course do not abound in this corner of the Internet.

Auto suggest helps slow typers or people that aren't sure of how to spell way more than displaying a hodge podge of results that change quickly.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#156

Post by MiddleEndian » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 2:33 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #138

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Lord - hijacking the arrow keys, which I use for page-scrolling, is one of the most annoying things ever. Kill it with fire!

It's a list of search results - why scroll when you can directly pick the result?

In Firefox I can hit / or ' to type the link I want and hit enter. When sites mess around with keyboard shortcuts it makes my browsing experience inconsistent and disorienting.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#157

Post by acosmism » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 3:20 AM UTC

brndn wrote: post #109

x1798DE wrote: post #13

This is awesome news. It was always a pain to set up my search engine to have instant off - and of course instant turns back on if you performed a second search on the results page of the no-instant page. I have never once had my search experience enhanced by this anti-feature, and most of the time it's a hindrance, because I'll start reading the search results, then based on that come up with a new query and start t…

I would guess that the intention of the feature was not just to give users results quicker, but to also make them feel as if Google search is very fast. So it may have been effective even if you didn't click any links.

right meaning that they potentially lose out on valuable ad targeting data this way

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#158

Post by manigandham » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #156

manigandham wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a list of search results - why scroll when you can directly pick the result?

In Firefox I can hit / or ' to type the link I want and hit enter. When sites mess around with keyboard shortcuts it makes my browsing experience inconsistent and disorienting.

That's a very slow and technical way but you can still do that if you want.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#159

Post by pimlottc » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 4:50 AM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #66

puzzle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, part of it was marketing, but there were benefits, too, e.g. for slow typers, which of course do not abound in this corner of the Internet.

When I fractured my collar bone in a bicycle accident I lost the use of my right arm for 6 weeks to a sling while the bones healed. So I bought a "half keyboard", a curious but functional contraption that uses the space bar to invert the left side of the keyboard into the right side of the keyboard, so that I could do full touch typing with only my left hand. The irony is it took about 4 weeks to get up to a useable…

That sounds pretty interesting, but egads, why in the world are half-keyboards so bloody expensive! And this from someone who's bought a few fancy ergonomic keyboards in his day. But it seems to me that a half-keyboard could be a pretty good ergonomic option since you wouldn't have to worry about find a keyboard with the right fixed angles for two arms.

Re: Google Has Dropped Google Instant Search

#160

Post by legostormtroopr » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 6:14 AM UTC

benhoyt wrote: post #75

x1798DE wrote: post #13

This is awesome news. It was always a pain to set up my search engine to have instant off - and of course instant turns back on if you performed a second search on the results page of the no-instant page. I have never once had my search experience enhanced by this anti-feature, and most of the time it's a hindrance, because I'll start reading the search results, then based on that come up with a new query and start t…

Yeah, I worked for Oyster (www.oyster.com) and had NSFW instant search issues all the time -- if I mistyped our site domain with two W's as "ww.o" the Instant Search results displayed a rather lewd image. Uh, sorry boss, that wasn't what I was after.

Probably shouldn't have tried to search for that ("ww.o") at work.