LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Google made the announcement that Google Instant is a great new timesaver for its legions of users. The change to its search engine could save users a total of 3.5 billion seconds a day.

Google Instant was revealed this week to much fanfare among the digerati. Google piqued interest by displaying a mysterious animated logo on its home page on Tuesday.

Here's how it works. If you start typing a search query, Google begins guessing what you're looking for even before you finish. Already known as auto-complete, that feature is familiar to many users -- although you still had to hit the "return" key to get to the actual results.

Google will now not only try to figure out your search request -- it will also show the actual results for what it thinks you're looking for . it will also show ads for all those results.

At Google press conference, Vice President Marissa Mayer called the technology "search before you type." And the company estimated that using Google Instant would save users anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds per search.

Google multiplied that out for its user base to come up with its global timesaving estimate of 3.5 billion seconds each day. "For a more personal take on the time savings, the Daily Beast hypothesized a user who types an average of 25 searches into Google each day," Daily Beast columnist Thomas E. Weber writes. "Multiplied out over 10 years, our hypothetical user would save themselves more than 126 hours of typing. Not too shabby.

"But in our tests of Google Instant at the Daily Beast, it quickly became clear that the time savings comes with a price: lots and lots of ads.

"Take a search for 'new york city weather,' for instance. As soon as you hit the 'N' key, Google Instant guesses you're looking for 'Netflix,' and shows the appropriate results-including a Netflix-related ad. Keep typing and complete the word 'new,' and Google thinks you want 'New York Times.' That's another ad. Then, as soon as you hit the 'C' in 'city,' Google decides you want simply 'New York City' -- and shows four more ads that marketers want to be seen with that search time.

"As it turns out, in our test, no advertisers appeared to be currently placing ads with the full search term, 'new york city weather.' We wound up viewing six ads with Google Instant-and we would have seen zero with Google's traditional approach," Weber adds.