Google realtime search isn’t real-time

By On August 27, 2010 · 4 Comments

Google have released a real-time search site aimed at showing search results as it happens. The disappointing thing is that although I'm sure that the results are instantly updated on the server they are not instantly updated in the web browser – they are still polling for new results. This means that the instant you get your search results back that the information is out of date. If a new result comes in between the poll requests then you won't get that update until the next poll.

The experience that this delivers isn't real-time!

The news of the real-time search site was published on Reuters and I was really surprised to see no comment about this at all. They've clearly just reported the news and not commented on it.

I'm going to keep on posting about these annoying stories, products and services until people start treating real-time as real-time. Polling is not real-time. Push is real-time!

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  • http://www.gravityzoo.com Marc Vrijhof

    Hi Phil,
    Good post.  When I think about  the real-time web it should indeed be about pushing data to Ip-connected devices ( and visa versa). Do you see this happen within the browser?

    • http://www.leggetter.co.uk Phil Leggetter

      Hi Marc,

      When I think about the real-time web it should indeed be about pushing data to Ip-connected devices ( and visa versa). Do you see this happen within the browser?

      Yeah, it’s already possible within the browser and the technology has been around for around 10 years now to make this possible. Kwwika, that I’m working on at the moment, makes this possible and there are other technologies and services that offer similar functionality. I’m almost 100% sure that Google have technology available to do this and it really annoys me that they don’t use it. They should be promoting best practices in terms of technology use and user experience and what they are delivering at the moment doesn’t meet the grade.

  • http://www.gravityzoo.com Marc Vrijhof

    Just viewed your demo! Good stuff.
    We work on push-based technology to remotely operate machines via Mobile. We have choosen to go outside of the browser because most IP-connected devices are not equiped to have a browser.  Furthermore we wanted to be able to remotely activate for example the mobile in case new content was available.
    So refrasing my question: do you see the real-time web happen entirely within the browser?
     

    • http://www.leggetter.co.uk Phil Leggetter

      So refrasing my question: do you see the real-time web happen entirely within the browser?

      Definitely not. Kwwika offers APIs in .NET, Java, C, Objective-C (iOS) and a few others because client push is eventually going to be expected no matter what device you are using. A lot of other services are concerntrating on web browsers because the introduction of WebSockets make it relatively simple to do in modern web browsers and we are slowly but surely seeing strong modern browsers on desktop and mobile devices.

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