Who put that bl**dy keypad in the way of my Instant Search?
Google are to release a mobile version of their latest instant search technology by the end of the year.
Yesterday we reported about Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s intentions for everything to be released on mobile first, and today we have to point out that it’s just not happening.
Google’s new Google Instant search facility is not out on mobile first, instead it’s aimed to be introduced sometime “later this Fall.” That’s autumn to you and me.
While it’s not available at the moment Google do have a version in demo on Android and this was demoed at their Search Conference this week.
As you’ve probably already noticed Google Instant is incredibly fast, and it’s just the sort of thing that any mobile user would love. “Typing on a phone is just slower, so the feedback is even more useful,” Google engineer Othar Hansson noted.
While we agree with Hansson, we do see a simple problem with Instant Search namely the keypad.
iPhone and other high-end mobile phone users will already have had the benefits of the auto-completion service in their Google search for sometime, and this does prove very useful. However one of the main problems that Google will have to get around is the way phones like the iPhone input text. When you enter text on the iPhone the screen keypad comes up and effectively obscures all of the Google search results (see pic), and as far as we know there’s not going to be any way around this problem. Perhaps this is why we’re not seeing Mobile First on Instant Search?
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