Google search's new basic calculator

where?

Interesting how Microsoft and Google have different ideas of how percentage key (%) should work.

Relevant post by Raymond Chen:

“How does the [Windows] calculator percent key work?”

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/01/10/70474...

Implementing % button, Google chose an approach which is more mathematically sensible but arguably less obvious to users. For Google, 10% just an alias for 0.1. This means that if you want to calculate how much a dress with a price of $299 costs with a 20% discount, type in

  299 + 299 × 20%

Perhaps, this is exactly how you think % should work.

Microsoft, however, chose to make “%” key more user-friendly, perhaps sacrificing some consistency. Windows calculator tries to use the last computed value as “the whole”. Therefore,

  299 - 20%

will give you how much a $299 dress costs with 20% discount, and

  299 + 5% - 20%

will help you calculate 5% tax before applying the discount.

Sadly, Google thinks

  500 + 1% = 500.01

which is really not that helpful.

Red Swede reporting in: only get a usual search query

What a complete load of shit. You have to actually click the numbers, you can't use your computer's keyboard. Google, I am disappoint.