Google are releasing a new upgrade to their search engine in the coming months. You can test this at the moment yourself by going here. The new engine, codenamed Caffeine by Google, is aimed at delivering faster, more accurate and more comprehensive results.
Search tests done by Mashable.com show that the new search engine is significantly faster!

New Google:
New Google
Old Google:
New Google

As you can see here its over double the speed of the old Google!

New Google is FAST: It often doubled the speed of Google classic.

New Google relies more on keywords: SEO professionals, your job just got a lot harder. The algorithm’s definitely different. It has more reliance on keyword strings to produce better results.

Search is moving into real-time: Being able to get info on breaking events is clearly a priority for Google and Bing. With both Twitter and Facebook launching real-time search engines, they needed to respond.

It’s partially a response to Bing: At least, that’s how we feel. This new search has a focus on increasing speed, relevancy, accuracy, and the index volume, things that Microsoft really hit on when it released Bing. It feels as if Google “Caffeine” is meant to shore up any deficiencies it may have when compared to Microsoft’s offering, though it’s been in the works long before Bing launched.