Sorry, that was the point. We could talk about opinions, sure. But all major search contenders do significant user research into how people will react to much less significant changes than Instant Search. This change had its but user-tested and dogfooded for quite some time.

an example: Steam, the game delivery system, takes longer to deliver and properly execute games than it takes to buy one from the store, install it and run it. but you get more value from steam so people sit through hours or nights/days worth of downloading to run its games.

Still, a competing product will win both over if it can get sub-100ms response time for all of their UI interactions. Buy and listen to a song? Imagine hearing it instantly after you click "buy & listen".