Alfa Jango Blog Engineering, Software, and Entrepreneurship

Google Instant Search is here, and over the last couple days there has been much hurrah about the sites that Google now loads directly into the results as you type, even after you’ve only typed in a single letter. Fast Company and Mashable have written about it. And before them, the Huffington Post wrote about it. And eight months before that, this little blog wrote about it. (By the way, the Huffington Post was nice enough to link back to us, so hats off to them!)

If you’re interested, check out Google One-letter Suggestions, where we analyzed the first 10 results for each letter (unlike these other publications who only look at the first result) and found some interesting trends back in December.

You see, these instant suggestions have been around for the better part of the year, before Google introduced Instant Search. Instead of loading the pages instantly as you typed though, it merely suggested search terms as you typed. In a way, Instant Search is actually the second step in a gradual release. The first step (the search term suggestions) meant you didn’t have to finish typing your search query, and the second step takes it just one step further, eliminating the need to hit ‘Enter’.

But what I really want to bring up is something I can’t believe none of the other major publications picked up on. This is the thing that I found the most interesting out of the entire analysis. If you type the letter “w” into Google, one of your top ten search suggestions is Facebook! Facebook? Yes, apparently enough people type “www.facebook.com” into Google that Facebook is a top-ten result for the letter “w”.

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We really hope this is some sort of sick joke on Mini’s part. In fact, we half-expect it is. But I would like to take this opportunity to discuss an important part of developing useful applications: Don’t waste time and resources developing something for which you have not yet solicited feedback. The trade-offs between openly sharing, and being “stealthy” can be quite one-sided. But first…

Background: Mini’s Mission Control

Typically, I am very pro-Mini. They are amazingly fun to drive and to auto-cross, and I came very close to owning one in the recent past. However, their latest feature, available on the limited Mini 50 Camden Edition, has everyone scratching their heads.

The best way I can describe Mission Control is that it’s what your car would sound like if it were a spaceship, and it had a crew of 3 people in addition to you, the pilot. It is 10% useful information read aloud to you (current fuel level, adverse weather warnings, etc) and 90% inane dialog between those 3 other crew members. And by 3 other crew members, I mean that the car talks to itself in different voices while you listen. In that respect, perhaps it’s more akin to what your car would sound like if it had multiple-personality disorder, and you were stuck in the middle.

But enough description, check out the video Oh, and this “feature” costs $5000.

Be sure to check out AutoBlog’s reaction as well

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*the post below was originally written Dec 9, 2009, while this screenshot was captured on Dec 30, when the post was *published, which explains the slight discrepency... I didn't feel like going back and rewriting it

The Point

The other day, I went to search for something on Google and noticed some interesting results from Google’s suggest feature after typing just one letter. Wow, I thought. How presumptuous of Google to think it can guess my will and desires from one letter. Of course that then led to curiosity, and hence this post. What terms manage to garner the top 10 spots for each letter of the English alphabet? So without further ado, the top 10 terms for each letter on Google’s suggest feature (along with some of my comments).

Interesting Statistics

• Brand names: 195 (75%)
• Generic Search Terms: 44 (16.9%)
• TV Shows / Movies: 6 (2.3%)
• Famous People / Bands: 9 (3.5%)
• Search Engines: 6 (2.3%)

Award of Awesomeness:

It’s a tie between Facebook and Yahoo, both for earning top spots in “w” for “www.facebook.com” and “www.yahoo.com” of all things. My hat is off to you both.

Multiple Entries

The winner for multiple entries is Yahoo, followed by Google (thought this is no doubt helped by the fact that most of Google’s competing services are directly linked to from Google’s home screen and thus don’t need to be searched for… not to mention the fact that there is less competition for the letter “y”).

• at&t: 2
• bank of america: 2
• comcast: 2
• ebay: 3
• facebook: 3
• google (including gmail): 6
• itunes: 2
• ikea: 2
• mapquest: 2
• myspace: 2
• quotes: 4
• ups: 2
• verizon: 3
• virgin: 2
• yahoo: 8
• zune: 2

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