There are two blog posts with real data from tens of thousands of search queries showing that in reality, the impact of Google Instant has been negligible:

- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-s...

- http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant...

I wish this type of sensationalist supposition without data to back up the assumptions received less attention here at HN. I've always been impressed with the culture of "show me the stats" when it comes to subjects like financing, startups, technology, engineering, etc. Not sure why that dissipates when a marketing topic arises.