[nkurz]

Great statistics, thanks! That's much higher than I would have guessed. While I agree that very few people change the default number of results, I would have also guessed that few click through to a second page.

Personally, I don't like the AJAX update approach. I'd much rather that a site just give me a long list of results, and allow me to scroll through them without loading delays. If I could set Google to return 1000 results, it would feel about right.

[jacquesm]

> I'd much rather that a site just give me a long list of results, and allow me to scroll through them without loading delays.

I think that is a balance between server load and user convenience.

On ddg it is already pretty fast, if you aren't in a real hurry it is hardly noticeable and faster than clicking through to a second page.

[JoachimSchipper]

Well, that, and the fact that users really hate pages that are slow to load. (Although most of the loading would happen off-screen, this can still slow down users/other requests/...)