Instant Search Previews

Recently in their blog, Google mentioned how their instant previews feature, which will soon be released officially, will improve users satisfaction. But, isn't this idea already implemented by Microsoft in their search engine Bing. The only difference will be, Bing shows only textual content in their preview with information like contacts or other relevant text/links from the web page.  Where as, Google plans on rolling out previews with graphical content (images) as well. I wonder why Microsoft didn't try this out in their Bing. One reason that comes to my mind is the goals they've set. Bing, which is good at answering users' questions, tries to give out relevant content in the preview itself. On the other hand, Google is good at directing you to right web pages. By showing graphical content in the preview for search terms, the users can identify quickly if they already know the page or the icon that shows up and reach their page of interest. Although I'm not sure if their goals will play a big role in deciding the features of their products in this competitive tech business which requires to attract as many users as possible.

Google Preview Feature

Bing Preview Feature

This thing interested me since I was also doing some work on incorporating previews while interacting with 3D  data in virtual reality environments. You may try the real thing here until Google releases this feature in their search page officially. And, for someone like me who tries to get maximum amount of work done with minimum use of mouse, their keyboard controls come handy too. I wonder how many iterations of design Google came up with to identify and understand what makes a good preview. 

Speaking of design, I'm tempted to talk about Windows 7 phone. If you own one which is an event of very little probability given that it was released only 2 days ago or if you have seen one of those demo videos, it clearly indicates the care and effort that went into its design. I heard from a senior employee at Microsoft about how designers of Nike shoes were roped into this project. Thinking out of the box really works!

P.S. Re-edited on 11/11/2010 since the pictures I uploaded earlier got deleted automatically.