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www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

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Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#181

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

dingnuts wrote: post #169
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's already set up for you in DDG, so why not use it? Because if I wanna search Reddit, I'd prefer to have '!r' search directly within Reddit and not litter my browser history with tons of duckduckgo entries like this: https://duckduckgo.com/l/?uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%...

weird example considering just how bad Reddit's internal search is and always has been -- that's a site I've always preferred to search with an external search engine, be it Google, DDG, or Kagi lol doesn't hurt to have options! to each his own

Best example I could come up with on-the-spot, because I already swapped out Google, Amazon, and Wikipedia on my Firefox install for native search engines, and needed to quickly generate search results from a DDG bang so I could show the accompanying history page. :P

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#182

Post by wharvle »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #107
mglz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who don't know them yet: use DDG bangs. For example "!m restaurant [citynmae]" will immediately bring you to Google maps, "!w chemistry" will open Wikipedia etc. Super easy and powerful :)

Setting stuff up for that in any browser worth it's salt isn't too difficult, skipping the entire middleman of any search engine.

Years and years ago I'd configure this stuff in FF, but using DDG effectively auto-configures it for any browser, exactly the same, everywhere, all I have to do is set the default search engine. And it includes some that I do use but probably wouldn't have bothered to configure on my own.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#183

Post by wharvle »

eviks wrote: post #119
mglz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who don't know them yet: use DDG bangs. For example "!m restaurant [citynmae]" will immediately bring you to Google maps, "!w chemistry" will open Wikipedia etc. Super easy and powerful :)

It's better to lose the inconvenient ! and use a browser that supports prefixes in the search bar Then you can "w chemistry" to open Wikipedia with a list of suggestions from the same Wikipedia ("Chemistry (Girls Aloud album)") in the same place

Something this doesn't do that DDG bangs do, is let me append it, or even stick it in the middle of a search. I can just type it wherever my cursor happens to be, other than in the middle of a term. This comes up when I search something in DDG then change my mind and want to use a bang.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#184

Post by mook »

shadowgovt wrote: post #150
egeozcan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's been a while since it's broken? url-bar search works so this seem to only happen if you navigate to google.com directly. How many people navigate to google to search, while using firefox on android? Just a hunch though. OTOH, it's amazing that apparently they don't have UI tests for FF mobile.

> OTOH, it's amazing that apparently they don't have UI tests for FF mobile. Why? They don't have UI tests for Opera on the Nintendo Wii either, and at this point I bet the install base for Wii-Opera is still larger than the install base for FF mobile. TBH, when I was there it surprised me that Google didn't have a dedicated hardware test-bench room with rows upon rows of browser deployments that every UI change need…

> Next update will be within 12 hours.

(From the status page linked above.)

That sounds pretty far from being nimble and deploying rapidly. Not really a knock on the people doing the work — doing stuff in high stress sucks. But it's clear that they're intentionally deprioritizing a competitor.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#185

Post by kevincox »

wharvle wrote: post #182
NekkoDroid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting stuff up for that in any browser worth it's salt isn't too difficult, skipping the entire middleman of any search engine.

Years and years ago I'd configure this stuff in FF, but using DDG effectively auto-configures it for any browser, exactly the same, everywhere, all I have to do is set the default search engine. And it includes some that I do use but probably wouldn't have bothered to configure on my own.

Firefox Sync is end-to-end encrypted and will sync your keyword bookmarks across all of your devices. Sure, you have to set them up but it seems worth it to get the ones that work for me, not whatever duck duck go thinks is popular.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#186

Post by [deleted] »

Draiken wrote: post #93

Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...

[deleted]

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#188

Post by forward1 »

phreack wrote: post #180
forward1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what you think happened here? Google made the search page blank for Firefox users to get them on Chrome? Or perhaps it's the work of Hanlon's razor.

That's discussed on GP's link, a former Firefox vice president said > "Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?" > "I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every…

This is a baseless accusation which defies logic.

Chrome has 65.76% of the browser market share.

Firefox has 2.93% of the browser market share, and of those, only some Android users were affected.

And you're saying Google purposefully contrived a situation to break their own service to get those Or is it possible no one cares about Firefox because so few people use it and this is the result of a simple bug?

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#189

Post by wharvle »

bigbillheck wrote: post #98
pmontra wrote: post #4

9 minutes ago: > Since this has now been posted to HN, I'll be locking this thread. This bugtracker is a work place, not a discussion forum. We have a bad fame.

> We have a bad fame. But not one undeserved.

N-Gate summaries were harsh, but fair. Basically spot on.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#190

Post by Y_Y »

forward1 wrote: post #178
lopis wrote: post #131

Given Google's size and market share, they should be fined whenever they break access to a competitor's website (e.g. Chrome update breaks access to DDG) or if their websites break in competitor's browser (e.g Google breaks on Firefox). They have more than enough resources to run automated checks on this, so it's hard to not see malice instead of incompetence in this case.

Fined by whom? On what authority? It's fascinating how people clamor for more government regulation and control at the first sign of trouble, without reasoning about the implications of those things, despite a history replete with examples of power abuse from the same.

By the government of any country in which Google has a presence? Are you really fascinated by people desiring regulation? Are you confident that history has more examples of the harm of regulation than the harm of its absence?
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