Just a day shy of Google saying the next step in search is automatic, Google’s gone ahead and announced Instant search. The idea here is that – as you type – results will come up before you even have to press enter. I didn’t quite get what Eric Schmidt meant the other day when he quickly touched on this next step, but it’s quite apparent now.

Did you know:

• Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
• Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
• If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.

I think what’s more amazing is how much sense it makes that this is the next step for search and we didn’t even make a big deal out of it. We’ve already experienced a taste of things to come as Google already predicts search terms, so it’s only logical that they’ll predict search results as you’re typing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this to work right in Google Chrome. Ironic, no? Predicted search terms came up just as they always did, but nothing more.

Google did leave a nice warning at the top of their Instant landing site stating not everyone will see it just yet, but my Google homepage indicated that Instant was – in fact – enabled and ready to go. Upon trying it, I was kicked back to the old search homepage. Your mileage will vary right now as things will take time to propagate across the web, but go ahead and watch the video above to get an idea of what Google Instant is if you haven’t already been able to try it.

Now the first logical question on an Android-focused site: how will this translate to the mobile web? Will it even translate? Is it even technically possible? And beyond all of that, will it even be practical? Those are the questions that many will be looking for the answers to as the mobile web continues to grow as technological societies of today strive to do more in a smaller package. For now, I’m just going to go ahead and wait for Google Instant to go live (for me) so I can run a bunch of useless searches just to see how cool this new feature really is.

[Update]: Would you look at that: Instant’s got a definite future on mobile. That settles that, then.