14 DAY TRIAL // Google Instant has been mostly well received by experts and users alike. The new UI is certainly fresh and the company seems to be staying one step ahead of the game.
But, while Google Instant may look innovative, it's not exactly a new idea. In fact, Yahoo had it and used it five years ago.
While never available on the homepage, Yahoo apparently holds a number of patents relating to instant search.
Yahoo's implementation was only available on AllTheWeb, a search engine Yahoo had bought years before. However, the tool looks remarkably similar to Instant and was actually rather solid for an experimental site.
Yahoo wrote a blog post when Google Instant launched to show that they were the first to do it. But being first is not enough.
Yahoo didn't roll out the feature on the homepage, maybe because it didn't want to mess with a good thing, maybe because it didn't perform so well or, most likely, a combination of the two.
Regardless, it made sure to file for patents on several technologies it developed for "Livesearch," as Yahoo called it.
Shashi Seth, Yahoo's senior vice president of search, told The Register that the company has five relevant patents.
However, there is no indication that Yahoo plans to do anything with the patents. And it's unlikely that Yahoo would go so far, though not completely out of the question.
Google Instant has just been revealed and the company has said that it started working on this latest incarnation last year. But it has said that it has been working on similar technology for quite a few years.
In fact, the oldest demo of a search interface similar to Instant goes back to 1999, Google says. There is a reason why it took so long though, search suggestions had be accurate enough that the feature would prove actually useful.
Yahoo's implementation also used suggestions, but the company admits that they were not as accurate as Google's suggestions are now.