In case you missed it, Google has put the foot down on its search engine and ramped up the speed. Google Instant shows results as you type, predicting what you want to search for and displaying the results instantly.

Forget having to taking those extra few seconds to press “search”, or even “I’m feeling lucky”. Just type.

From Google:

“Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

According to Google, its new way of searching saves you about 2-5 seconds per search. It doesn’t sound like a lot to start with. But if everyone who uses Google around the world used Instant Search, it would add up to 3.5 billion seconds a day – or about 11 hours saved for every second.

More figures from Google:

• The typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term.
• Some searches took 30-90 seconds to type.
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.

You’ll have to go to Google.com to see it though; Google.ie has yet to be enabled for the new search function. Domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia are up and running if you use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.

If you don’t want to save five seconds, you can always turn off Instant Search through a link beside the search box.