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I designed[1] the Chrome Omnibox, and appreciate a lot of the conjecture in this thread and other places - I wish I was as devious as many people assume we were
by gmurphy 5y ago
I designed[1] the Chrome Omnibox, and appreciate a lot of the conjecture in this thread and other places - I wish I was as devious as many people assume we were.
The short version is that while many users can differentiate, it's more a problem of WHEN they differentiate - Chrome's entire design philosophy was around speed, and the omnibox was designed so that we had a simple destination that a user could focus on when they had decided to go somewhere else, but before they had decided WHERE they wanted to go to or HOW they were going to get there, and then make it so they wouldn't have to think about the HOW. If their search term autocompleted to a URL so they don't have to go through search, that was a win. This same philosophy was what drove putting the most visited pages on the New Tab Page (which was a blank page in most browsers at the time).
Some users plan out their actions before they take them, but I wanted to make everything as streamlined as possible so you could interact with Chrome as you thought about what you wanted, and not making you wait until after.
[1] I was the designer and occasional engineer, but the entire team takes the credit - everyone was behind the idea from before we even started work on Chrome, and many smart people deserve more credit than I do for how good it ended up being.
- southerntofu 5y agoHow do you feel that your invention was used to harm users and empower a quasi-global monopoly on search engines for the profit of tech billionnaire psychopaths and secret services? I don't think you had to have bad intentions (just like physicists and the atom bomb), but do you think the web is better for users without search boxes or search engine choices, and with Google forcing centralized AMP proxying down everyone's throat and therefore trying to actually completely remove URLs?
- frostwarrior 5y agoPlease, if we were to call out every developer who works or has ever worked in AnyEvilCorp® then almost no one comes out alive, maybe except RMS
- croes 5y agoSo the excuse is everybody else jumped from the bridge too?
- Randosaurus 5y agoIt's a valid question to ask.
- southerntofu 5y agoI've called out people in the past on works they seemed proud of. In this case, parent commenter explicitly acknowledges that their work had unintended consequences that they did not foresee. So i'm asking for critical lessons/insights they may have gained on the way. Calling out is "hey you're doing such bullshit". "How do you feel that what you did had this consequence?" is opening a debate to share experiences, not "calling out".
- tripzilch 5y agoSpeak for yourself.
- hans-moleman 5y agoI don’t understand what exactly you’re mad at the guy about? He made an ultra-usable textbox… millions of people use it every day instinctively because it’s a great tool. You can’t crucify him because of your own personal qualms and completely ignore the flip side of the coin.
- southerntofu 5y agoI'm not mad, just looking for retrospective insight. I don't know about you, but i've learnt great lessons by making mistakes, and i've found historical examples like Albert Einstein's reflections to be eye-opening. Everybody does mistakes, and i'm not here to throw a stone. But i'm looking for lessons to be shared and learnt.