Hacker News Reader

Comment by ezl | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why anyone complains about Google Instant.

It requires one less mouseclick. If you want to pretend you're using the old Google, you can just close your eyes while you type, randomly click your mouse, then open your eyes. You will have before you the same results that original Google would have returned.

Unless you get confused by the "Instant" feedback along the way (like you somehow get distracted by shiny other searches that Google recommends, forget what you were originally searching for and get "tricked" into some new query), it shouldn't be an issue.

View on HN

I don't understand how you use your mouse when using Google, other than to select a search result? Normally I just press Return.

The problem with Instant is precisely the risk of distraction. It's the same reason I don't use Suggest - and in fact, I now am forced to avoid www.google.com completely, as there is now no easy way of disabling Suggest on the web page. It used to be you could switch between Suggest and non-Suggest; now, your only choices are between Suggest and Instant.

I'm sticking with the search box in the browser.

(Actually, there is a way to disable Suggest: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0 ; but that's impractical except as a bookmark or home page.)

I think he's suggesting using your mouse to select a result.

I think he's suggesting clicking on the Search button, because there's no difference in mouse clicks between Google Instant and old Google if you press Enter upon entering your query.

You could disable Javascript.

> I don't understand why anyone complains about Google Instant.

Google Instant is everything that is wrong with a poor Ajax implementation.

No back/forward history, I've lost count of how many times it kicked me out of the search text box as I was editing a query, and when I try close the tab my browser warns me that I have edited text in an un-submitted form.

It's a complete and utter mess, as far as I'm concerned. The best thing about it is that you can turn it off.

The true power of Google Search is its ability to predict and correct your query text on the fly as you type, but that feature been around forever in my browser search box.

Google Instant is just a very lame (and buggy) gimmick to compete with Bing's gimmicks. If rely on gimmicks to help you decide which software to use, so be it...

Uhm, it has history. A great implementation.

here's my problem with google instant + suggest

type "maple" into google. don't click enter yet. your eyes then wander down the results, wondering wait, what's all this "maplestory" stuff? I typed in maple. you then finally realize to click enter to only get results related to "maple", and not "maplestory"

Sure, my mind will get used to it, but I'm not really crazy about suggest being the first result. And you're not saving yourself a click or type of the enter key in that case.

I don't get distracted by the new search results, but I do get distracted when the search bar suddenly jumps to the top of the screen.

I don't know how it reduces the number of mouse clicks, though. There was one before (selecting a result), and there is still one after.

1.)I agree saves me the instance of having to press enter.

2.)I usually know what im searching for and type fast enough where most suggestions are not a distraction, and barely pay attention to it.

3.)When trying to refine a search its actually very helpful, and fast, when deleting a word or suggesting an added word to add to the query... i can refine search, scan results, and know right away if results are getting better or worse.

For me its a awesome.. not so much concerned with bandwidth or cpu as author.

I complain because it has changed, while I was typing, one or more of the words I typed, resulting in a loss of time, having to go back to those (now) wrong words and replacing them with the right ones.

I tend to know better than Google Instant what is the precise search term I need to use to give me the results I want, be it either because it is technical or (some other times) because it's in a not very big language.

It's cool to see the results pop up, but even on my new macbook pro and google chrome there is a bit of GUI lag that happens when it's refreshing, which makes my computer feel slow.

I suspect the proportion of people who get distracted by intermediate displays is large enough to actually be valuable to Google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com