Google Brings Instant Previews to Mobile and It's More Useful Than on the Desktop

Google just announced that mobile users on Android (2.2+) and iOS devices (4.0+) now have access to Instant Previews, a feature that Google launched on the desktop last November.

Google launched a small test of Instant Previews on iOS about a month ago and has now rolled this feature out to all of its mobile users. On mobile, Instant Previews works slightly different from the desktop version. You don’t just get to see a preview of a single site.

Instead, Google will give you previews of all the sites in your current search results on a side-scrolling page.

This is actually surprisingly fast and works reasonably well. It feels a bit like FastFlip, Google’s experiment in giving its users a more visual experience for browsing news sites.

I have to admit that I had mostly forgotten about Instant Previews on the desktop, but I can see how using it on a mobile device could be useful. Going back and forth between sites on a phone to find the one you were really looking for, for example, can be rather frustrating when you are on a slow connection. Being able to see previews of all of these sites should make it easier to find the right one instantly.