Google’s launch of Google Instant last year was somewhat limited in its scope. At today’s Inside Search event Google Fellow Amit Singhal revealed some recent developments in Instant Search, which currently saves users between 2-5 seconds in each search. Google Instant will now be available in 32 languages and over 69 domains on desktop and mobile. Today it will be launching in all of Latin America, which means in 16 new domains.
The Instant Search feature is also now available on Google’s “Image Search,” working by changing the images as you enter search queries.
Singhal also announced “Instant Pages,” or what Singhal calls “the next big leap in Google Instant.” Instant Pages prerenders search results, allowing you to click on a search result and have it load instantly, as opposed to having to wait for four seconds.
Google promises that "your phone will be your wallet" and starting Wednesday this wallet will be able to snag daily offers in Portland, Oregon.
Google Offers will go live on a limited basis in the City of Roses and expand this summer to hundreds of merchants in San Francisco and New York City. If Google can do with Offers what it did with search and Android, then Groupon is in for a world of hurt.
Google News for mobile lets you keep up with the latest news, wherever you are. Today we’re excited to announce a new feature in the U.S. English edition called “News near you” that surfaces news relevant to the city you’re in and surrounding areas.
Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008, and today there’s a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.
Now you can find local news on your smartphone. Above is an example of a “News near you” mobile section automatically created for someone in Topeka, Kansas.
Continued…
