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Google timer

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Re: Google timer

#31

Post by pioul »

martin-adams wrote: post #8

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ 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…

A precedent has already been set a while ago with Google's calculator [1], Knowledge Graph [2] and whatnot.

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

Re: Google timer

#32

Post by flyingyeti »

jfoster wrote: post #29
martin-adams wrote: post #8

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ 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…

This is also far from the first (or even broadest) utility of this type from Google. 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

More:

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

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

Re: Google timer

#33

Post by magicalist »

thomasd wrote: post #23
martin-adams wrote: post #8

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ 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…

I believe they have Facebook envy and now wants to keep every visitors they get on the site for as long as possible, just like Facebook. This is a departure away from their original philosophy in which their goal was to send users to the most relevant site for the user query as fast as possible. I hope they haven't forgotten that the reason Yahoo lose out to Google was precisely because of this. Yahoo switched their…

Google has been keeping users from calculator web sites with its calculator/unit converter since before Mark Zuckerberg even wrote Facemash[1]. A fairly obscure timer feature that only shows up when you search for a particular phrase is nothing like search portals of old, nor is this a departure from the different search result widgets they've had for a decade now.

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...

Re: Google timer

#34

Post by drakaal »

Seems to be limited to 1 second short of 1 day. What good is that? I want a timer that counts down to my favorite console launch. (I am not saying which one because I figure if I choose the wrong console I won't get any upvotes)

Re: Google timer

#36

Post by taejo »

thomasd wrote: post #23
martin-adams wrote: post #8

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ 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…

I believe they have Facebook envy and now wants to keep every visitors they get on the site for as long as possible, just like Facebook. This is a departure away from their original philosophy in which their goal was to send users to the most relevant site for the user query as fast as possible. I hope they haven't forgotten that the reason Yahoo lose out to Google was precisely because of this. Yahoo switched their…

I don't think it's to hold users on Google as long as possible: it's to give users what they're looking for as soon as possible.

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.

Re: Google timer

#38

Post by oakaz »

numair wrote: post #6

If you want to break it, search for "timer for 23 hours 59 minutes 60 seconds" ... For some reason the code seems to be configured to max out at 24 hours. I am too busy dealing with my own broken JavaScript code to take a look, but maybe someone here can view source and figure out why they made that decision?

Try this: http://requirebin.com/embed?gist=6668018

Re: Google timer

#40

Post by andyhmltn »

martin-adams wrote: post #8

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ 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…

In a way, yes it seems quite bad that Google has enough power to just completely destroy small sites like that. But when it's a lot better from a user perspective just to instantly see the result than to navigate to some poorly designed ad-ridden mess to get what they need.
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