Yahoo! answers Google Instant with streaming web search

Yahoo! has unveiled its answer to Google Instant, rolling out a "streaming" search service that it claims is significantly faster than the technology Google debuted last fall. Like Google Instant, it serves up search results as you type. But unlike Mountain View's service, it does not provide results from a relatively complete …

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete Fail

From what I can see it just serves up the top 3 results from the traditional search.

In many basic searches I tried it simply said no suggestions available. Wonder how many will/will not realise if they hit search they will get 'some suggestions'.

So this will mean there is no point advertising on Yahoo (own goal) as your ads won't be seen by many searchers.

You might as well use googles 'I'm feeling lucky'.

Also seems Yahoo is favouring itself, type in Yahoo and all the results are Yahoo services with extra deep links. To be fair though it does the same for MSN and Google so it appears they are doing something else as well as listing the top 3 for certain terms.

An epic fail me thinks.

[Anonymous Coward]

no, its actually a Complete Fail on both Google & MSYaBingHoo

Surely I cannot be the only 'net user who despises Google Instant? Or are there hidden flags that I don't know about that I can add to my url (https://www.google.com) that signify the following:

1) I do, in fact, know exactly what I want

2) I have limited bandwidth, so a half-duplex connection is not optimal

3) If is msispeel a word, I certainly don't want results for crap, wait until I correct it and press enter

for example: http://www.google.com?IQ=high&GI=never&CR=yes

In a land (world?) of bandwidth caps, sending 72k one time is better than sending 70k every time i type a letter.

Additionally, being in IT, I'd like all printable ASCII characters treated the same. If I'm searching for "string.50" I don't want results for string (but not 50), nor do I want results for 50 (but not string) and I don't want results that contain both string and 50 but not string.50.

I will be the 70th to admit that altavista, yahoo and google have made searching easier. I can still remember searching bitnet archives for links to information. Its like the difference between a computerized card catalog in a library vs. wandering through the stacks pulling out ever 10th book, and hoping/praying that everying was in some kind of order...

That reminds me of a tech-support site that I use. Two years ago, any query I ran had the string "VPN" automatically added to the it. I got so fed up that I started every query off with "not VPN and ". I don't know if they fixed it because it was reported or if they counted the number of queries that contained "not VPN" and, only then, figured out why that string was so popular.

[Anonymous Coward]

@theodore

"string.50" Sounds as though you should be searching code.google.com

And you can switch Google Instant off in the settings window.

[Alastair 7]

Except, no

It appears to show the top 3 results when it doesn't have anything else to show. But search for Kobe Bryant (as the article states) and you see a stats sheet. Search for Hong Kong, and it provides a list of hotels, top spots and the current time.

It's only a complete fail when you compare it to Google Instant (which actually still annoys me a bit). I think it's actually a quite different product, and it's a shame that it's only ever going to get compared to the way Google refreshes a page as you type. This works out relevant categories of information, and displays the most used. Maybe I'm alone, but I find it pretty interesting. It's not a whole lot to look at now, but if they add more info, and allow third parties to plug in data, it could get very interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Suggest-as-you-type

It looks a lot like the bog standard suggest-as-you-type services that everybody and their mother provides thiese days, with a little bit of google instant on the right-hand side...