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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
When Google launched Google Instant Search back in 2010, the company called it a fundamental shift in search that would save searchers time when running searches on Google.
Instant Search displayed search results page to the user during the process of typing the actual search phrase the user was interested in.
In [the] best case, it would display the desired results earlier. In [the] worst case, it would throw a number of unrelated search results page at you while you tried to focus on typing your search query.
[...] I disabled Instant Search as soon as it came out. [It] was terribly annoying if you typed long queries quickly.
The feature could also jack up bandwidth [usage,] as more results pages may have had to be loaded during your typing of the search phrase you were interested in.
Starting [July 27], Google Instant Search is no more. The company has put the feature to rest, all thanks to the rise of mobile and the fact that Instant Search does not really work that well on mobile devices for a number of reasons.
Do any Soylentils still do searches from Google's landing page?
Once you get a Google result, have you then been typing into Google's page to refine your search?
I hated Mozilla's AwesomeBar and, when I encountered Instant Search (on the library's machine), I was irritated. (I do searches as URLs, from the Address Bar; it's one reason that I hate most Google "replacements", which are script-driven and don't show you a URL that you can repost.)
(Score: 2) by number11 on Friday July 28 2017, @04:02PM (2 children)
This. Except that I use Pale Moon, which has the classic search box. And set the default search engine to Ixquick, and use NoScript and a VPN.
So yes, if I use Google, I do use their search page (it's set as my home page, so it's one click to get there). Oddly, I don't remember ever seeing this Instant Search thingie, just the autocomplete (which is mildly annoying as it's unnecessary, I know how to type, but not so annoying that I've ever tried to do anything about it). It does sound like a tremendous bandwidth waste, especially for those of us doomed to slow DSL connections.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 29 2017, @02:30AM (1 child)
I remember when their autocomplete first came along... was annoying as all hell and got JS promptly disabled for Google, and so it remains to this day. Or would be if I hadn't long since switched first to IXQuick/Startpage, and then to the Duck.
And speaking of Fucking Google (which is now all one word) a couple days ago they seem to have completely disabled flash video on Youtube. (I have HTML5 disabled in my main browser because it's such a royal PITA and loses nearly all the features I use.) Had to scrape up a browser that doesn't speak HTML5 to be sure, but nope, no flash video anymore, at all.
Well, that will give me a lot more free time, as it'll cut my Youtube use down by 99%, and will completely zero out my random browsing. Offhand I can only think of three of my ~300 subs that I care enough about to put up with the stuttering and inability to downsample far enough or go fullscreen, and generally sluggish (or absent) controls that are HTML5 video (and controls are completely invisible with site colors off, as my eyes require). Anything else, I'll either download or ditch.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @07:31AM
Have you considered youtube-dl [github.com]?