Google Instant heads to the iPhone and Android
July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
As promised, Google has brought its wicked fast Google Instant search to mobile devices with support for the iPhone and Android, the company announced today on its blog.
The service works just the same on mobile devices as it does on the desktop. After turning on the beta instant search functionality, search terms that you type on Google’s mobile website will automatically deliver results. You’ll see predictions for your search terms as you type as well.
Google says it’s “pushing the limits of mobile browser and wireless networks” with the feature. A new implementation for mobile browsers uses the HTML5 standard for Web pages and AJAX, a common Web-programming technique, to dynamically update search results, giving users a big speed improvement in the process.
Google Instant works best on 3G and Wi-Fi connections, but you can also easily turn it off without leaving the search page in case of network hiccups. It’s currently available for iPhones and iPods running iPhone operating system 4, and it’s available for Android 2.2 devices. The company says support for more devices and languages is coming in the next few months.
After playing around with Google Instant on my iPhone 4 for a bit, I’m finding it even more impressive than the desktop. Perhaps it’s because it’s a much bigger speed improvement for mobile search than it was for desktop search, but I’ve definitely found a new appreciation for Google Instant on my iPhone. Now let’s just hope we can get the feature in Gmail soon.
Check out a demo of Google Instant for mobile below:
