Tech Search

Last week, Google introduced a feature to its Web search that breaks with that tradition -- an option called Google Instant that shows you search results before you even finish typing a query.

Google Instant (http:/ / google.com/ instant) is a somewhat logical extension of the "auto-complete" feature that it and other search sites offer, which suggests search queries matching what you've typed so far. It also makes a vaguely frightening statement about our collective attention span online -- and how much Google claims to know about our interests.

Instant works like this: If you run a modern browser (Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or newer, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, Apple's Safari 5 and version 5 or newer of Google's Chrome) and start typing a query on Google's home page, the site will display links matching your query after you've typed the first letter.

For example, typing just "w" yielded links showing the current weather for the District. Revising and extending that query to "wa" caused Google to spotlight links for Wal-Mart; "was" yielded links to The Washington Post's Web properties.

It didn't take long for Google users to start comparing how many keystrokes it takes to be pointed to one site vs. another -- turning the practice of Googling yourself into even more of a competitive sport.

But Instant's results, like Google's ordinary results, may be tailored to users' location. A friend in Portland, Ore., found that "k" yielded info about one of the city's TV stations; here, it directed me to pages about Kings Dominion.

Instant also shies away from providing previews to objectionable content. Attempting to type more than the first half of a four-letter word beginning with "f" caused Google to stop suggesting links.

The Mountain View, Calif., company seems quite proud of the time Google Instant can save, bragging that this option "saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search."

Is that really Instant's primary selling point? Have we become some race of info-hamsters, running ever faster on our exercise wheels.

The thought that we must save a few seconds in a Web search is enough to make one yearn for the quiet, calm (and often frustrating) routine of thumbing through a library's printed card catalogue.

Instant looks more interesting when seen as a way to turn a search into a conversation: You type a query, see what Google suggests for a match, then revise, check its suggestions again, revise further, and so on. Except, instead of having to click the "Back" button or hit the backspace key, all this happens on one page. It can become a weirdly compelling sort of man-machine synthesis.