I was looking into google.com\'s Net activity in firebug just because I was curious and noticed a request was returning \"204 No Content.\"
It turns out that a 204 N
Like Snukker said, clients1.google.com is where the search suggestions come from. My guess is that they make a request to force clients1.google.com into your DNS cache before you need it, so you will have less latency on the first "real" request.
Google Chrome already does that for any links on a page, and (I think) when you type an address in the location bar. This seems like a way to get all browsers to do the same thing.