Instant Pages
We all know Google is obsessed with speed. They are now introducing a new prerendering technology into Chrome, which will start loading the page you are most likely to click on in the background, cutting down or even eliminating the time it will take for the page to load once you click it.
Google said that the pages will only preload if the algorithm has a very high confidence that the user will click on that specific link. They did talk about the fact that they don't want to use up bandwidth for no reason.
I think Google can pull this one off, after all, the amount of search data they receive on a daily basis is enormous. They definitely should be able to figure out what pages users click on most often. Think about how often you search something and go to look at it's definition on Wikipedia, or the popularity of Google's I'm Feeling Lucky. I think Google's algorithms should be able to do a good job predicting our next click.
I've always liked Google Instant which searches while you type, and paired up with Instant Pages, it can save us that annoying period of time between clicking on the link and starting to interact with the page. I'm looking forward to seeing how well this feature will perform.
Google is also bringing some of the unique features mobile search features to the desktop. Android users should already be familiar with both of them.
Voice Search will now allow you to search by speaking. During the demo, it seemed to recognize words really well, even a word the presenter didn't know how to spell. Google is also supposed to learn through voice searches to recognize words better, so it can be quite effective. This feature will only be available on Chrome.
Image search now will also allow you to use images to search. You can drag and drop images or provide links and Google will then analyze the image and search using the information retrieved. This one is already rolled out for me and works really well, can be pretty useful too.
Google also discussed how much mobile browsing has grown in the recent years. They showed this graph which compares the growth of mobile search over the last 3 years compared to how desktop Google search grew in it's early days.
They also showed how the two compare over a regular workweek. During the week desktop search dominates but start falling on Friday and is much lower, while mobile search rises during the weekend. Obviously, mobile search is growing really fast, so Google also added a few helpful new features for Google Mobile to save you some keystrokes.
From the new desktop features, search by image can be pretty useful in some cases. I doubt I'll use voice search any time soon but it is the next step in being able to interact with your computer by talking to it and I suspect it will be much better then the voice recognition that is currently built into Windows (I've seen some fail videos, heh).
Instant Pages should be really useful though. I hate waiting for pages to load, so if this feature is effective, cutting down that page load time will make me happy :)
Ok, lunch break over, back to work! Also:
GO CANUCKS GO!
No comments:
Post a Comment