Google Suggest graduates from Google Labs - going live on homepage!

Since I first started writing this blog in late 2007 I've mentioned Google Suggest quite a few times. I suppose I should have seen the writing on the wall once Google implemented its Suggest feature on YouTube. Low and behold, Google has finally caved into the pressure from this high-powered blogger and decided to add Google Suggest on a default basis to its homepage ; )

In my humble opinion Google would rather have not added the Suggest feature - I mean, they've had the feature in their labs since 2004! But with all the wannabe competition popping up with neat autocomplete menus - Google began to seem a little Web 1.0ish without the feature (see Yahoo!, Cuil, Mahalo, etc.). Not to mention that there's actually a firefox plugin that adds Google Suggest on a default basis.

It has been my contention that Google will probably see less clicks on their Adwords listings as a result of going live with Suggest - the reason being that users will enter more accurate search queries, which will ultimately lead to better Adwords listings and more efficient clicks. So while I believe that this could hurt their bottom line in the short-term, the long-term payoff will be there simply because it's a much better search service.

Now the only search goliath that is without an autocomplete feature is Microsoft Live. But after speaking with a few Microsoft product developers at SES San Jose I can assure you that Live will be live with autocomplete soon. As per these product managers, "Microsoft has been following Google's experimentation with Suggest closely, and plan to unveil a feature of their own within a couple of months". Should be interesting to see what the fallout is from Google's announcement - although Google is one of the innovators of Autocomplete its hard not to say that they're simply following the pack with this decision.