[mseebach]

Auto-complete is just a subset of search. Why is it more offensive to type "john smith" and get the suggestion "serial killer" than search "john smith" and have the first three results being about John Smith, the serial killer, and only getting to John Smith, the mountaineer and cat lover, in position four?

[brk]

I think that one valid argument could be if people searching for this guy were commonly using a term like "John Smith Gym Teacher" they would likely never see the results for "John Smith Serial Playground Rapist". Or, at the very least the playground rapist results would be so far down the list that they would naturally be mostly disregarded. But, in this case the fact that "Playground Rapist" results are more common than the "Gym Teacher" results it could be argued that this skews the perception of John Smith in peoples minds.

[firefoxman1]

How about this one:

I want to search "why do blue whales migrate"

Part-way through my search I stop to think. Here's what is in the search box so far: "why do bl"

Try it out yourself. I bet some people get pretty angry about that.

[jamesbritt]

Auto-complete is just a subset of search.

Is that true? Or are auto-complete suggestions merely additional terms that are part of popular search queries (but not necessarily search results)?

[mdwrigh2]

It's a meta-search, in a sense. A search for search queries.