Google is now offering real-time predictive search on its homepage. Currently it works for anyone signed into a Google account, but we expect the service to go wider soon.

Some online pundits have suggested that Google’s just pulled off the Internet version of New Coke – a supposedly better product that nobody really asked for – but I’m sort of liking the instant results, which seem to make the whole search process a little faster.

An instant response from Microsoft?

But how will this affect Microsoft’s Bing? For the moment, Microsoft seems to be sticking with ye olde-fashioned model, suggesting possible search terms as you type but not offering real-time links to those searches. At least, not yet: If past trends are any indication, Microsoft will attempt to one-up Google with a predictive search feature of its very own, possibly within the next few weeks.

At the same time, though, Bing seems to be diverging from Google in certain key ways. Back in March, Bing Director Stefan Weitz pointed out to eWEEK that Google maintained an epic lead in traditional keyword-based search, compelling Microsoft to focus more on verticals such as commercial-based queries and travel.

“People are creatures of habit and they’re fairly happy with Google’s keyword search today and they think it works well,” Weitz said at the time, “and there’s no reason for them to look around.” However, Bing has been gaining, recent figures show.

Bing expansion

At the same time, Weitz added, “It’s not a zero-sum game … We think we can expand that which people do with these engines. We can grow the overall pie, the overall number of searches that are happening across the web.” That means focusing on areas such as Bing Shopping, or instantly connecting users to theatre show times – and in turn leads to features such as Local Events, which studs a map with pins showing the day’s happenings around a particular location.

By the time June rolled around, Microsoft had expanded its verticals, offering an Entertainment tab centred on music, movies and games. That addition gave Bing the feeling of a Yahoo-like web portal: not only could you search for terms from the main search page, but with two or three clicks you could also watch movie trailers or stream a song via the company’s Zune service.

In other words, Microsoft may follow Google’s latest foray into real time, but the two companies’ search engines seem to be diverging somewhat in their respective missions and features.