Has Google created a new type of drive-by security exploit?

Google is always creating new ways to search, but has it gone too far with the latest innovation? Some security experts are suggesting that might just be the case with Google Instant Pages.

Some Google innovations are subtle tweaks to behind the scenes algorithms, although the end results can be anything but subtle as was the case with the recent ‘Panda’ revision which impacted upon search traffic for many innocent web outfits. Then there was the Google Instant innovation, which provided the first stab at predictive searching for Google but not without some controversy.  Having search results appear automagically as your enter your search terms is a great time saver, but once again can impact negatively on providers of web services whose pages do not appear as Google uses a keyword blacklist on Instant search which could effectively make your pages invisible to those users who come to rely upon the Instant way of doing search.

Now Google is taking that ‘instant way’ a step further by pre-rendering the top pages in a search based upon what it thinks is most relevant to your search terms. The search giant reckons it could save a couple of seconds, maybe as much as five seconds, off of the average ‘type your term to view the page’ search time. The trouble is, according to at least one security expert, is that it could add a whole lot of hassle into your life by introducing the possibility of drive-by-search exploits.