Google Instant Predictions From A to Z

Google just launched Google Instant, a speedy new search offering that lets users search as they type. With Google Instant, the search engine technology is capable of predicting a user’s search query — in gray text — before he finishes typing it.Those predictions tell an interesting story, especially when you look at single letter predictions. During today’s press event, Google demonstrated that by typing the letter “W,” Google Instant predicts the query to be “weather,” and immediately returns weather results before the searcher ever hits the search button. Pretty cool stuff.


http://mashable.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-predictions/


What do you think about this?



A friend on Twitter mentioned that this may hurt longtail keyword searches.

I think he's right :search:

 

I just tried it to see- and it's kind of annoying I think.
With your weather example, there are many many other things that people could be trying to look up that begin with W. Showing the drop down menu of possible searches is good, but this is jumping ahead somewhat.
I may wind up getting used to it one of these days, though! Curiously, is this something Google wants to implement permanently, or are they just experimenting with it for now?

 

It's always been one of the things I didn't like about Yahoo search.

 

Firefox does that too when you type stuff into the search bar (list searches related to the stub you've entered).