If you've ever stared at the search box, trying to remember the name of that band your cousin mentioned the other day, Google can now help by completing your thought for you.
Google Instant, which launched on Wednesday, takes auto-complete to an extreme. As you type, possible completions of your query appear in the search box, followed by full potential search results for the search Google thinks you want to make. The old style of auto-complete still required you to select from among a number of candidates in a drop-down box. That function is still there, it's just augmented with actual search results before you're done typing.
As you might expect, searching for all the possible things you might end up wanting to search for is a bit of a headache on the engineering side of things. Google's Ben Gomes explained in this presentation both the technical challenges and some of the techniques his team used to get around them.
Read more at www.newscientist.com
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