GOOGLE IS TAKING Internet search speeds to another level by letting people use speech or images to express what they want faster.

Google engineers have also shaved precious seconds off the time it takes for Web pages to display after links are clicked on in search results.

“We at Google will not be happy until we make the Web as easy to flip through as a magazine,” Google fellow Amit Singhal said at an “Inside Search” event in San Francisco.

“We measure every millisecond,” he continued. “The time it takes Google to return a result is negligible compared to how long it takes the user to enter the query.”

One the other end of the search, it takes an average of five seconds for a Web page to load once a person has clicked on a link listed in query results, according to Singhal.

Members of Google’s search team rolled out the California-based firm’s latest innovations crafted to deliver the knowledge being sought “in the blink of an eye.”

Google’s latest spanned all gadgets from desktops using Chrome software to browse the Internet to the latest Android-powered smartphones or tablet computers.

“In mobile, we are always thinking about how we can make the process of getting those results easier,” said Google mobile engineering director Scott Huffman.

Google added icons to the bottom of mobile search pages that let people do common searches such as for restaurants, cafes, or bars with a single click instead of having to type in queries.

Google also began letting people build queries with simple “plus” buttons and providing instant previews of search results pages that could be glimpsed with simple swipes of a finger on a touchscreen.

Huffman announced that a Google Goggles feature allowing people with mobile devices to search using pictures now translates languages in photos of text, with Russian added to the list.

Google was taking innovations in mobile and applying them to desktop computers with the addition of voice and image search capabilities, according to search director of product management Johanna Wright.

“Mobile has opened a world of possibilities,” Wright said.

Google was also rolling out an “Instant Pages” feature crafted to predict which link a searcher is likely to chose and have that Web page pre-loaded for display as soon as it is clicked.

“Sometimes, when you click on a result the page will be just there instantaneously,” Singhal said of the feature. “This is amazing.”

- AP