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More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
FOR MOST PEOPLE, googling something is a way of answering quick questions that you may have like the capital of a certain country or a celebrity’s age.
Google already includes instant search results, but its latest update will insert answers directly into your search suggestions. That means it will try to answer questions with short answers (places, dates, etc.) before you finish typing.
The idea, which was first spotted by The Next Web, is if you wanted to look up the capital of France for example, it would provide the answer underneath the query so you don’t have to wait for the page to load.
While it’s good in theory, it’s not exactly consistent yet. If you ask it what the capital of a country is, it will sometimes provide an answer while other questions like money conversion won’t appear.
In one case, the instant answer containing the plot of a movie was provided despite there not being enough room to fit in the first sentence of the answer.
Also, where you see it pop up isn’t consistent either. Some may see it appear in Google’s main app while others may see it on Chrome.
Either way, it’s the direction Google is taking its search engine so don’t be surprised if you start seeing more answers populate your search suggestions.
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