Today Google unveiled Google Instant and Google Scribe, two auto-type functions that will change the way we write and search online. Google Instant automatically fills in search text as you type–the particular author, publisher, or publishing news site you seek will magically appear before you even press enter.
Google Scribe utilizes the same predictive text technology as a typing tool. You can write your next novel or email, allowing Google to guess what you will write next.
Google-savvy writer Robin Sloan tweeted a Google Scribe-written story: “‘The knight rode to their website and buy this product again and again and again.’ First 3 words by me; rest by [Google Scribe].” He concluded: “Google Scribe is like, the first Surrealist web-app.” What do you think?
Here’s more from Google: “Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type … seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.”