Google News: Instant Adds Keyboard Navigation; Bing VP Disses Instant; Flintstones Doodle & More
Google yesterday announced a new feature to Instant: keyboard navigation of SERPs. Instant results have also been added for some of its search features (news, videos, books, blogs, updates, and discussions).
Don’t think this has rolled out completely yet, as I can’t access it on Safari, Firefox, or even Google’s own Chrome browser on my Mac. Others mention it doesn’t yet work in the comments section of the Google Instant Enhancements video on YouTube.
So here’s how the keyboard navigation works. Once you’ve confirmed your search, you can scroll through the search results using your arrow keys. A little arrow will appear next to the page title as you arrow up/down the SERPs. When you reach the result you want, hit enter, and you’ll go to the website.
Instant also now works for the vertical search options. Again, here you can navigate through the results using only your keyboard. No need for a mouse anymore.
Google Instant is also now available in 12 new countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine. Instant will roll out in more places internationally in coming weeks.
Bing Senior VP: Instant = Fail
Speaking of Instant, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president, said yesterday at Disrupt that Google Instant is misguided. Google Instant increases the number of results delivered to users, rather than helping them more easily find the information they’re looking for, he said.
“Where we’re different is that for us it’s about speed to task completion. It’s about getting what you want accomplished, it’s not about getting a lot more results,” Mehdi said.
Yabba Dabba Doodle
The Flintstones are today’s cool Google Doodle, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the show’s first airing.
Other Google News Bits
Forbes has a piece up focusing on a Republican policy memo, stating resistance to reforming an outdated privacy law, as Google, Microsoft and others push for updates.
Also, at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday, Vinod Khosla spoke about when Google wanted to sell to Excite for less than $1 million, and they passed. Khosla talked Sergey Brin and Larry Page down to $750,000, but Excite CEO George Bell even rejected that. Google is now worth around $167 billion.