I clicked the link to be opened in a new tab - and continued what I was doing.

I heard that beeping sound, and was completely baffled where it was coming from (didn't sound like it was coming from the speakers).

You should have seen me picking up papers on my desk listening to them. I listened to every potential port on my phone to see if it was giving off this sound.

I felt like I was going crazy while I was doing it, but I just couldn't figure out the source of the sound. Thinking back, if a camera was in my office, that woulda been hella funny to watch.

#justsaying

which comes up top of the google search results for "timer for 1 hour" for me. Now there is absolutely no way they can compete with Google's own offering from an SEO perspective.

While this example is trivial to some extent, does it set a precedent that while you can advertise and compete with Google, they can always have the unfair advantage at being top of the list.

So while yes, it's scary/crazy to launch a web app that is so easily clonable for Google, the "general use" nature of Google means that they'll never have these functions as prominent features. This leaves room for simple web apps who do a better job (or at least have a simple UI that is understandable).

Hmm. Why not? Why can't Google continuing builder richer and richer search results, results which become smarter and smarter in matching what users are looking for? The potential level of customisability for a search result/user to a search query is infinite. At higher levels you move beyond the crude "search" metaphor to what Google is really working towards: full brain-augmentation. Not a tool the mind must learn to use, but a tool built to work with the mind, a tool in fact that is tailored perfectly for each and every mind.

All joking aside it must be really hard work to keep your ranking at #1 when competitors (and google) can easily replicate your functionality.

Even with the google thing that does the function at the top, users have the choice. If it was a "I'm Feeling Lucky" style redirect (but always to a Google service with no search results page) whenever the query fit a format that keyed a Google-provided service, then the user wouldn't have the choice, but giving you a thing that provides what you think you want as well as links to other pages that might either do what you want or have the information you want doesn't deny you the choice of using those other pages instead of Google's tool.

If you provide the best product, even better than what google can provide, it won't matter that google put theirs at the top of their search results. e.g. G+ and facebook - no matter how hard google is promoting G+, it still hasn't gotten the traction of facebook.

I hope they haven't forgotten that the reason Yahoo lose out to Google was precisely because of this. Yahoo switched their vision from a search engine to a portal, and their product search engine start to suck.

This is dangerous. The best ad platform (which generates the most revenue) are those that are most efficient at sending traffic to advertiser's properties. Facebook main source of revenue comes from mobile app install ads which direct users to the app store for download, and page post ads, which sends traffic to advertiser's website.

A change in priority to hold users as long as possible on Google search isn't very tenable in the long term.

This feels like a feature that the OS should have but most don't, and I'll use it like I use google as a calculator or as a dictionary: if it's faster to open a tab and put in the query than it is to launch a program or a particular page and start a timer there. I did the same thing when I was on windows and it was faster to ask google than to run "calc" and then do the calculation, and it was the same tradeoff when I switched to a mac and it turned out spotlight could do many calculations even faster with just a command-space.

[1] http://mentalized.net/journal/2003/08/12/google_rocks_my_wor...

But their recent card-based solution to a lot of searches seems to show that they're trying to keep users on Google-owned properties. Try searching for a movie review. You'll notice that everything that pertains to the movie is shown on top and on the right. Clicking on actors lead to yet another google search result with another card on the right. In short, you're being kept within Google.

Does it get you the information you're looking for in as little time as possible? Absolutely. But they're doing this at the expense of the sites they took the data from.

That would be Freebase, which is what it's for.

I'm not really seeing your point for that example, though. Maybe for something simpler it would be true, but if I'm looking for a movie review, the information in the top right isn't sufficient for anything besides seeing a wikipedia summary, a screenshot, and some of the actors in it. Anything deeper would require clicks into the actual content, which is actually an apt analog to a simple timer not replacing anything of substance.

define <a word> 1 + 2 open <filename> etc.

It's "magical".

I was looking for a timer utility the other day. I googled "timer 10 minutes", and got back a list of options, with no way to choose one that was actually good (the top result claimed it had an audio indicator but it didn't work, so I ended up missing the end of the ten minutes). Likewise, I used to Google for weather forecasts -- then pick a site, wait for all its chrome to load, and then get my forecast. Now, I search for what I want and get it right away. If I don't like Google's version, I just scroll down to the search results.

At first, their only way to get users what they wanted was to get them off the site; the goal is still to get users what they want as soon as possible -- there's just a better way to do so now.

The right solution is for Google to open up the SERP in a limited way, allow sites to put their widgets there and let them compete. This is tricky (tech, business, UX...) but it's doable and it would be better for the future of the Web.

Of course the timer sucks for the owner of the top-ranking timer, but I can't see how it diminishes user experience in any way.

I would argue that Yahoo! lost to Google because Yahoo!'s business was in approximating a solution to a problem that users had, and Google came along and figured out a way to much more directly address that problem. Curated lists were better than nothing, and for a long time, it was the best thing available. Google simply built a new type of thing that made the old way immediately obsolete.

Search engines' goal is to deliver information and services to their users as fast as possible. If they can provide those themselves, it's a win both for them and their users.

I wrote about it here: http://pioul.fr/dont-trust-search-engines-with-your-traffic

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=1%2B1

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=banana

See also:

https://www.google.com/#q=calculator

https://www.google.com/#q=time%20in%20new%20york

https://www.google.com/#q=50%20miles%20to%20km

https://www.google.com/#q=1%20usd%20to%20rmb

https://www.google.com/#q=barack%20obama

https://www.google.com/#q=weather%20in%20sf

https://www.google.com/#q=aal+1

https://www.google.com/#q=nfl+scores

https://www.google.com/#q=define:hello%20world

https://www.google.com/search?q=flights+to+new+york+from+la

https://www.google.com/search?q=calories+in+a+pint

Bud Light: 109 calories in 120z. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA: 294 calories in 12oz. Weyerbacher Merry Monks: 279 calories in 12oz.

In a world where people still don't know what a browser is, I am optimistic for online-stopwatch.

The Google Search field is the CLI of the web?

I've also noticed the results of a search for [Olympic medal count] steadily improve every two years so that I no longer need to click through to any search results to see the data I want.

Sometimes I think that your only option as an affiliate in these markets now is to brand yourself so heavily (MoneySuperMarket, for instance) that people search for your brand, understanding what you do, rather than trying to rank first for the generic term (compare insurance, cheap insurance etc) and hope they click your link.

Even if Google's offering for some of these things is still not as pushed as it could be today, what's to say they won't butcher your traffic / revenue tomorrow?

Just like how "define: something" doesn't show a dictionary definiton for me anymore, a functionality i used all the time. And now can't be sure whether was actually removed, or just removed for me!

But I would beg for a bit more patience and understanding on this one point: it's not like we have one server that all our users connect to. When new features roll out, it's inevitable that some users will see the new features before others do. Also, there are often complex legal issues affecting how products are released in different countries. Okay, that's two points. :-)

When I'm in the US, I deliberately navigate to a European Google site (usually google.co.uk) in order to get their onebox flight schedule search results. I really enjoy seeing a full timetable of published flights for the week when I do a search for "[flights lhr fra]". Doing the same search in the US, and seeing the new Google Flights ad instead of the old timetable onebox, is infuriating.

I remember, back in the day, Google didn't used to do this. That was 8-10 years ago, though. At first it was interesting, a curiosity, seemingly clever. But from the start it was annoying (at least, it was, in a global community centred around ways to search the web) because there is no easy way to select what "view" of the website you want to see. (there were ways but they kept changing, and I didn't keep up)

Maybe that is the worst anti-pattern. Most websites that change their entire behaviour depending on what IP you came from, at least offer the option to select a different behaviour, or specify from what locale you want your perspective.

Best would be if one could simply link to such a perspective, so that this article would actually make sense to everyone, instead of just the people that live in the "correct" part of the world ... :)

The following attempts all failed: logging out, a different browser, /ncr , incognito, and tor browser. The US site on the new user account also didn't work. Interestingly, all of the u/jfoster examples worked the first time.

So "flights to LON" will not bring up a schedule, while "flights from LON" will. And for most of my purposes, I only care about the destinations, not exact times, so this works fine.

I'm not sure why exactly, but I really hate this. I hate it that sometimes results have a news link and sometimes they don't. I hate that youtube suggestions are tailored to me. There are rational reasons. I want the thing I use to be there when I try to find it. But, I dislike it beyond the inconvenience. It just feels wrong, like I'm being probed.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2410479?hl=en

I believe you have identified the cause. Switching javascript off and on between queries makes the define: operator stop working and then return to working. I block cookies and don't log into google in both cases.

Silly, lazy, javascript-loving google, it used to work just fine without javascript and I don't see anything particularly special about how it works now that should require javascript either.

It used to not be interactive, either, yet now it is. JavaScript used to not be a core web technology, yet now it is.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/?sort=us...

Essentially all of the browser exploits over the last decade have had javascript as a necessary component. Irresponsible use of javascript forces your users to expose themselves to attacks for your convenience. That is abusive and is the kind of thing that will drive away your most sophisticated users who are likely to be be adoption trend-setters for any endeavor not primarily pop-culture oriented.

Google's inertia means they don't have to care, but nearly everybody else has a lot more to lose from alienating those users.

Works fine for me.

It doesn't work on .com for me, it doesn't work on .dk (I'm from denmark). Doesn't work on .nl which someone reported worked for him. It's weird

Also tried it in both firefox and chrome.

And someone else mentioned it didn't work for him without a google account, I've tried both logged in and logged out

It seems that if they continue to do things this way, sooner or later, Google is likely to replace thousands of utility websites.

This seems like a change in their philosophy from sending users to other websites in as little time as possible, to using Google as a portal.

Interestingly, this change in philosophy by Yahoo from a search engine to a portal was what made Yahoo lose out to Google.

Yahoo filled their front-page with items that wouldn't be relevant except for some tiny percentage of the time, such that even if the front page had what you were looking for, it was like a needle in a haystack. Google's approach here is only revealing the portal functionality in response to a specific request for it. It won't kill them, and may even be a competitive advantage for them over any competitor search engine that has superior ranking algorithms.

Conversion: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=150+GBP+in+USD Weather: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=temp+in+london

Chances are it's a classic case of choosing a register size such that the time counter wraps around at 86,400 seconds, and to avoid this, they would have to explicitly include days -- and chose not to.

Max for seconds: 999 Max for minutes: 999 Max for hours: 23

more testing google.. more testing

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  done = Time.now + ARGV[0].to_i
  while(true) do
    sleep(10)
    `say "Time's up!"` if Time.now > done
  end

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  require 'time'
  done = Time.parse(ARGV[0])
  while(true) do
    sleep(10)
    `say "Time's up!"` if Time.now > done
  end

    $ sleep 28800; while :; do cat /etc/termcap; done > /dev/audio

    $ sleep 8h; mpg123 <something>/pandemonic_hyperblast.mp3

But now my stereo and my CDs gather dust and I (and my neighbours) do not miss them.

(I'm shouting both because it's very important advice and because I'm now deaf)

1. Create new bookmarklet

2. Name: Pomodoro

3. URL: javascript:window.open("https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr#q="+((document.title.index...)?"":"2")+"5+minute+timer&safe=off",'_self');

4. Save

Click on the bookmarklet to toggle between "Work" and "Break" mode.

[1] http://tomato.es

  timer <time of day>

Original Reddit link that started it all: http://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1j3pnv/ysk_us...

https://www.google.com/#q=timer+23+hours+61+minutes

It has to be https://www.google.com/#q=timer+for+10+seconds so I made a custom search URL and can now use the timer through Alfred.

http://errk.se/remind_me_after/

https://www.google.com.au/?q=timer+for+23+hours+59+minutes+6...

https://www.google.nl/?q=timer+for+23+hr+120+min+59+secs#q=t...

javascript:window.open("https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr#q="+((document.title.index...

https://www.google.com/#q=timer+for+3+minutes+30+seconds