No, search as you type only happened with Instant Search, which launched in September 2010. From 2004 on, you still needed to press Enter to perform an actual s

No, search as you type only happened with Instant Search, which launched in September 2010. From 2004 on, you still needed to press Enter to perform an actual search. Even now, you can inspect JS traffic and see that usually there aren't 14 searches when you enter [superbowl 2017]. Internal metrics reflect a lot of that nuance and more. Source: I own a Google Instant shirt because I was in one of the teams involved in months of testing and in the launch.