If you thought Google’s instant search was fast, but it’s about to get even faster. Soon, with the company’s push into “contextual discovery”, you won’t even have to type in a search query to get useful data.

Google’s Marissa Mayer, now the head of consumer products, spelled out the company’s plans at the LeWeb ‘10 conference in Paris, France today, speaking with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. With contextual discovery, Google will be able to look at a user’s browsing and location profiles to deliver relevant data without the need to search.

According to Mayer, “The idea is to push information to people.” On a mobile device, for example, you could potentially see the menu of a restaurant when you’re actually there. There may even be added social elements, like seeing which items on the menu your friends like. Google is still in the early stages with this concept. Mayer says that on a computer, it could potentially take the form of some sort of panel in your web browser.

The push towards delivering data before we even ask for it is to be expected — after all, where else can Google go after unleashing its lightning-fast Instant Search? It’s also a natural move given that location data on mobile devices is now more readily available thanks to the proliferation of GPS-equipped smartphones. The real question is how contextual discovery will play out on actual computers — I suspect it will rely more on the rich amount of browsing history we build up on desktops and laptops, rather than on location data.

Google has to play it safe when it comes to automatically recommending search results, though, lest it evoke memories of Microsoft’s annoying (and now dead) Office helper, Clippy.

Find a transcript of Mayer’s talk over at TechCrunch, and a video embedded below:
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/viewer.swf