Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly • Hacker News Board

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#21

Post by citricsquid » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

andrewingram wrote: post #18

Given the size of Google, I wonder if there was a whole team tasked with this development. A 404 page for a company as big as Google is an awfully big responsibility for just one person :) To be honest, I prefer the idea of a more intelligent 404 page. You'd think Google would have sufficient horsepower to make a good guess at what you might have been trying to find.

This was something I was thinking too. I watched a video from Matt Cutts yesterday where he mentioned they have a "team" (I guess it could just be 2 people, but it sounds like more) who are entirely dedicated to parsing 404 pages that return 200 response codes. I too wonder if they had a team just for this, or maybe they have a "usability" team who were tasked with this?

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#22

Post by shazow » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

etherealG wrote: post #20

tuxcanfly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`//www.google.com` will automatically translate the url to http/https depending on the requested protocol.

is this officially accepted syntax? does it work in all browsers? (I'd really love both these answers to be yes so I can start doing this on my sites)

Yes and yes, since 1995.

More specifically: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt

Via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3583103/scheme-relative-u...

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#23

Post by absconditus » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

Who cares? What interesting discussion is there to be had about this?

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#24

Post by bradgessler » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

Google has been really been stepping up their design over the past few months. I really like the subtle tweaks they made to the top bar across all google pages:

https://img.skitch.com/20110302-kdhkc99usamdhb6yaptrw2y81d.j...

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#25

Post by jedsmith » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:08 PM UTC

absconditus wrote: post #23

Who cares? What interesting discussion is there to be had about this?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279949 is a start.

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#26

Post by etherealG » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

shazow wrote: post #22

etherealG wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this officially accepted syntax? does it work in all browsers? (I'd really love both these answers to be yes so I can start doing this on my sites)

Yes and yes, since 1995. More specifically: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt Via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3583103/scheme-relative-u...

thanks :)

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#27

Post by ZoFreX » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:25 PM UTC

bradgessler wrote: post #24

Google has been really been stepping up their design over the past few months. I really like the subtle tweaks they made to the top bar across all google pages: https://img.skitch.com/20110302-kdhkc99usamdhb6yaptrw2y81d.j...

This hasn't rolled out for everybody yet - I see it at work, but I don't see it (when signed into the same account) at home.

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#28

Post by jeffbarr » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

> "That's all we know."

Not true. They know the sub-domain and the path. Either or both could be used to do something more intelligent.

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#29

Post by nicklovescode » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

that page also has no body tag

Re: Google finally has a 404 page that isn't ugly

#30

Post by dmaz » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:33 PM UTC

The response says the server is "sffe". It seems to be used for static web hosting on android.com and providing HTTP error codes for other sites. I'm guessing it's running on the edge servers, but Google hasn't publicized what it is, that I could find.