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Google Timer is gone
- stuckinhell 4y agoI guess I need to roll my own timer.
- frays 4y agoAs an ex-teacher, I hope this comes back.
- wuschel 4y agoGoogle seems to have shut down the integrated timer .
- sam1r 4y agoIt’s been gone for a few weeks. I wonder what the cause would be?
- fjdbeb76 4y agoI heard it just timed out.
- yababa_y 4y agoSo many of my professors have put this on the screen during an exam. Truly, a great blow to academia.
- prof_hibschman 4y agoCan confirm! Not for exams, but for "let's breakout into projects and meet back in 15 minutes".
- freedomben 4y agoI ran into this a few days ago and figured I had done something wrong. Fortunately Duck Duck Go has an acceptable timer: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer
- spurgu 4y agoDoesn't play a sound for me until I focus the tab (using Brave).
- cmeacham98 4y agoThat's a Brave (mis)feature, I tested and it works for me alt-tabbed out on Firefox.
- ChrisGranger 4y agoIncidentally, Brave Search also has a timer widget. https://search.brave.com/search?q=timer https://search.brave.com/search?q=timer
- ad8e 4y agoThis timer works well on Firefox. It has no issues with network unreliability or time changes.
- slategruen 4y agoIt's a general problem for Chromium-based browsers. I also experience this with Vivaldi. It has something to do with the tabs sleeping.
- spurgu 4y agoYeah has to be it.
- ad8e 4y agoThis is an unacceptable timer. It loads an mp3 and js file when the timer completes. If the internet is not reliable at that moment, the timer will silently fail. Positive: at least it will still ring if the timer skips over the exact second, such as with a date change or momentary stutter. Many online timers have this problem. Prefer the Brave timer linked in a down-tree comment.
- csours 4y agoThey were tired of having to smear leap seconds in the timer. I mean, Google rolls over in bed and crushes $1mm products and does not even realize it.
- dannyw 4y ago$1mm at Google scale is absolutely peanuts; it should be crushed.
- thieving_magpie 4y agoTake away inbox and rss reader but at least leave the timer!
- graderjs 4y agoTrusty metronome is still there tho: https://www.google.com/search?q=metronome https://www.google.com/search?q=metronome Not having the timer feels a little sad, but if Google had done this 6 months ago, someone could have raised a 5M seed round for a blockchain based distributed timer app...
- humanistbot 4y agoClockchain
- rzzzt 4y agoMiners generate a timecoin every second, which they can spend on work, family, hobbies or any other activity.
- peanut_worm 4y agoWhy does google do things like this
- isoprophlex 4y agoI can only come up with "they truly truly TRULY don't give a single flying fuck about their users"
- cafeinux 4y agoThey love their users, but only those who watch or click on ads.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoyou are the product, not the user. The real user is buying add space.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoImagine thinking you're their user. Google's users are advertisers. You are merely the product being sold.
- teraflop 4y agoI'm sure they did a careful, sophisticated A/B test and discovered that the timer was measurably decreasing revenue. After all, if you're clicking a timer widget, that means you're not clicking a Youtube video titled "6 minute countdown" and watching a 30-second ad first.
- isoprophlex 4y agoSweet Jesus, that is even more cynical than my own take, but you must be right..! Amazingly, this could very well be the reason imo...
- walthamstow 4y agoAll of the SEO farm timer websites in the SRP will be plastered with Google ads too.
- thisoneworks 4y agoI used to use this as my pomodoro timer. Why do you be like that google..
- ericabiz 4y agohttps://pomofocus.io/ https://pomofocus.io/ is a nice-looking website with Pomodoro timers.
- mvellandi 4y agoThat is a nice design! It’s cool that one can download the app for desktops. I made a shared timer (not nearly as pretty) a few years back, with live URLs and admin login codes for controls. Intended for LARP leaders or fitness coaches. Unfortunately never deployed, but works using Elixir, LiveView, and ETS in-memory DB. https://github.com/mvellandi/easy_timer https://github.com/mvellandi/easy_timer
- kytazo 4y agoYou're using google less, that's good afaik
- elforce002 4y agoI didn't even know that was a thing.
- canacrypto 4y agoDitto for stopwatch. Whyyyyyyy?
- orangepanda 4y agokilledbygoogle.com Claims another victim
- dudeinjapan 4y agoThey are repurposing it for their International Timer Day doodle.
- robbiet480 4y agoTip calculator has been gone for a bit too.
- thematrixturtle 4y agoStill showing up for me? https://www.google.com/search?q=tip+calculator https://www.google.com/search?q=tip+calculator
- robbiet480 4y agoYou’re right. What has broken is searching “20% tip on $20.00” or similar. That used to automatically prefill the tip calculator.
- rr888 4y agoI kinda like Google not doing everything. When google starts to do all the little services like timers, conversions, speed tests there isn't any room for anyone else. I just wish the alternatives weren't so scummy.
- hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 4y ago
- tjpnz 4y agoProbably couldn't find a way of monetizing it.
- danielfoster 4y agoThis is at least amazing for a few lucky website owners and YouTubers. Maybe someone in the EU anti-trust area discovered Google had a timer and threatened to fine them?
- robertakarobin 4y agoI used this all the time when teaching! Why, Google?
- superchroma 4y agodid... this have a cost? are there any savings at all?
- usrusr 4y agoSetting something like this up encrusted in enough process to ensure that it won't disappear a few million commits later would certainly cost a lot. It can only be cheap of it's allowed to disappear.
- tyingq 4y agoSince this post is recording its death, here's the HN post that recorded its birth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6429564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6429564 Edit: Another blog post from someone that noticed it: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/08/google-timer.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/08/google-timer.html
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoTop comment and reply in that thread: > Yet again I am reminded that my google is not necessarily the same as 'your' google. Just like how "define: something" doesn't show a dictionary definiton for me anymore, a functionality i used all the time. And now can't be sure whether was actually removed, or just removed for me! > Google software engineer here. These gripes are legitimate. We want our users be able to depend on our features and services, and if you can't do that, we're letting you down. Still a legitimate gripe nine years later, it seems...
- ldjb 4y agoGoogle are well known for the amount of services they deprecate [0], but what gets less attention is functionality they remove from their core search product. It seems like quite a few "advanced features" have been removed, including `link:` which I found extremely useful for finding web pages that link to a given URL, and for which I haven't found a decent alternative. [0] https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- user3939382 4y agoLet me take this opportunity to introduce you to one of my all-time favorite Mac apps https://github.com/kristopherjohnson/MenubarCountdown https://github.com/kristopherjohnson/MenubarCountdown It performs its job perfectly.
- ttepasse 4y agoOne of my all-time favorite Mac apps is also a timer, input via mouse instead of typing: http://maddin.io/gestimer/ http://maddin.io/gestimer/
- Zigurd 4y agoThey are holding it hostage. When leap seconds are no longer a thing they will bring it back.
- istjohn 4y agoI've used https://e.ggtimer.com/6m30s https://e.ggtimer.com/6m30s for years
- nayuki 4y agoTriangle solver on the search results page is also gone. Here's how it previously looked like: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/03/google-geometry-calculator.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/03/google-geometry-cal...
- cwales95 4y agoStill there for me but I’m on mobile.
- petercooper 4y agoSearch based things come and go and quite randomly, I've found. "£1 in $" is a search I've used perhaps 1000+ times over the years and while it's been consistent for the past year or so, it often used to not return the currency conversion (but alternatives like "1 GBP in USD" did, etc.)
- esprehn 4y agoThat's usually a ranking problem. Search is one big ranking system even for these custom looking responses. Sometimes they mess those up, or the backend that replies with them is down (ex. They accidentally took down weather once for the whole world).
- bhawks 4y agoI'd be shocked that it was purposefully removed. There are so many search features that no one can count them (people were proud about that and also the fact there was no list of all of them). Most likely a ranking change is stopping the feature from being triggered. Someone will read this and it'll be silently fixed in a week or 2.
- jacquesm 4y ago> I'd be shocked that it was purposefully removed. Why? They've done this time and time again. Google is its own worst enemy in this respect. I have our whole company standardized on Google because I still see them as the least bad option but I live in fear of losing some critical functionality because of an 'upgrade'.
- bhawks 4y agoBecause I have first hand experience on a good swath of the search stack. Shuttering a standalone product is mostly an organizational effort. Removing a search feature is a coding adventure. One feature is sprinkled across the code base like pixie dust, magically becoming a count down timer to serve a users query. It is simply too high a cost to go and remove a single feature. It is also highly unlikely that leadership would approve bricking a swath of search features for technical reasons, it is just not in the organizational culture. It's a bug that'll be fixed when someone notices.
- jacquesm 4y agoBuilding something I agree with you, that's difficult. Shutting something down is a one bit affair. After that how long you take to remove the now dead code is an entirely different matter.
- trasz 4y agoCan you explain how a timer could be complex, apart from impressively bad engineering?
- 4y ago
- crazygringo 4y agoThat's weird. Given how many other useful similar tools remain, it would seem extremely odd this was removed intentionally. But on the other hand, given all of Google's infra/tests/quality/etc., it would also be extremely odd for this to be removed by accident. Maybe some component being deprecated internally meant this was easier to shut down than upgrade, but for a feature this simple that wouldn't make a lot of sense either. This is... kinda baffling, to be honest.
- bhawks 4y agoSearch is a very old codebase comprised of several large monoliths that are mostly tested by end-to-end diffs. There is no central repository of all search features and if the timer is tested, it is likely forced to trigger with debug flags. For timer to disappear like this would most likely be caused by a ranking change which prevents it from appearing as the top result (the only position it can render itself in).
- cmeacham98 4y ago> For timer to disappear like this would most likely be caused by a ranking change which prevents it from appearing as the top result (the only position it can render itself in). Does Google really not have some sort of "Always rank this result first" flag?
- rwmj 4y agoBack in their Don't Be Evil days they actually clamped down on another part of Google that gamed their search results: https://searchengineland.com/google-penalizes-google-japan-16541 https://searchengineland.com/google-penalizes-google-japan-1...
- bornfreddy 4y agoYeah well... Those days are long gone. :-/
- themacguffinman 4y ago
- evo_9 4y agoDuckDuckGo has a very nice timer: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer+&t=newext&atb=v265-1&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=timer+&t=newext&atb=v265-1&ia=answ...
- somenameforme 4y agoAt this point I'd recommend Brave Search for all things, including timer! https://search.brave.com/search?q=timer+for+30+seconds&source=web https://search.brave.com/search?q=timer+for+30+seconds&sourc... The search is distinct as opposed to largely relying on Bing, and I find the fact that DDG decided to start 'down-ranking Russian disinformation' troubling. If Iraq had had a comparable Western facing media machine as Russia, their claims, that they had no WMD and the war was being waged on false premises, would have undoubtedly also been labeled as disinformation and ultimately widely censored as well. It's quite dystopic. [1] https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
- hedora 4y agoDon’t worry, The top DDG hit for “neo-Nazis had taken over Ukraine's Rada” has been spreading Russian propaganda since at least 2018 (according to Wikipedia). DDG’s “downranking” of such things just means they’re not exclusively showing Russian sockpuppet propaganda sites now. (The Rada thing was the top result of my search for examples of Russian propaganda in the US. If there’s some other Russian propaganda you’re worried might be censored, feel free to check DDG then post an example.) Edit: Also, I distinctly remember CBS and NPR both pointing out that the Iraqi WMD lab was actually just a dairy delivery train car, as did a sizable minority of the senate. The main issue was that we had a propagandist in the White House, and the outlets that Russia currently is supporting helped push the WMD agenda.
- somenameforme 4y agoOften in memory we tend to make things from the past much nicer than they were. Here are a couple of interesting articles: Washington Post - "Irrefutableable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... NYTimes - "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u... Those articles, alongside that war, played a large role in shaping my entire worldview. I come back and read them every once in a while.
- staindk 4y agoIt may just be down temporarily. I used to use this Google Search timer extensively until there was a period of time (years ago) where it didn't work reliably for me - I think it counted down fine but then played no sound. Unsure if this affected others but I had to abandon it. Funnily enough, the Google Clock timer on my phone (which I set via Google Assistant) has had a similar intermittent issue lately. It would count down to 0 properly, and then just continue past that to -1, -2, -3 seconds, on and on, and end up playing the alert audio like 2 minutes late. Weirdly, it knows that this is happening as there is no normal 'dismiss' option until the sound actually starts playing. Not the biggest deal when it's my coffee timer being a bit late, but if it's for something more time-sensitive in the oven it does actually matter.
- doodlesdev 4y agoI don't get it, why do people use the "google timer" or any kind of online stopwatch, like, any modern desktop environment comes with a timer application, and it even works offline!!! I get using currency conversion (since that's data that changes) and a few other functions. But really, seriously, can someone explain to me what was the use-case for this?
- gmiller123456 4y agoConsistency. It's in the same place and works the same way on every platform.
- doodlesdev 4y agoThat makes sense, thank you. This reminds that most people don't really want "native" experiences on their devices, and mostly think about "consistency". I guess that's the same use case for using a shell to do basic chores.
- dementiapatien 4y agoI open my Windows 10 start menu, type in 'timer', and no results are found. Same for 'stopwatch'. The google timer just worked.
- jameslars 4y agoBoth 'timer' and 'stopwatch' suggest the Clock app to me in Windows 10. When I open it there is timer and stopwatch functionality available in the menus.
- saltminer 4y agoLinux Mint (Cinnamon) does not come with a timer or stopwatch pre-installed. I didn't realize this until I needed a stopwatch a few weeks ago only to find nothing. There are tray applets available for this, but none that combine both a timer and stopwatch, so you have to deal with two extra icons in your tray or just use Google.
- gab007 4y ago"Google does not care about their users". Well.. I am not sure about that, but there is always the option of not using Google products, or using as few as possible Google products. - I've closed my G Suite legacy free edition (as opposed to transitioning to paid) - I've moved away and stopped using Gmail, Drive, Photos and Keep I am still using maps & youtube - these are a bit tricky to replace. No hard-feelings, Google is no longer the company/innovator it used to be (remember back on 2005 got an invitation for gmail, and I was over the moon).
- reaperducer 4y ago"Google does not care about their users". Well.. I am not sure about that Google cares about its customers, not its users. Google users and Google customers are two different entities. but there is always the option of not using Google products, or using as few as possible Google products. A New York Times columnist tried this maybe a year or two ago. With the help of an expert, tried to go completely Google-free, meaning no access to any Google API. It turned out to be impossible, since so many apps, programs, and services rely on Google behind the scenes for everything from flight data to CAPTCHA.
- Jiejeing 4y ago> Google users and Google customers are two different entities. Google hardly cares about their customers as well, unless you are big enough to make a dent in their income, which you are not. The number of people paying for gsuite who never managed to get a hold of an actual human after a brutal and unwarranted termination of their online life is quite big, if you expect them to care about their customers.
- bagacrap 4y agoI pay Google for phones, home devices, a YouTube subscription, extra cloud storage... if you are made uncomfortable by the deal of getting an amazing suite of products without paying for any of it then perhaps you can quell your unease by becoming a paying customer. Even if you are too frugal to part with any of your cash, your statement, besides being worn and trite, is plainly false. Without users (even the free tier), Google goes out of business, which is decidedly an anti goal.
- VoodooJuJu 4y agolol, past few days I've missed this. Was always the most convenient way for me to set a tea timer.
- faitswulff 4y agoUnit conversions are far less useful now, too.
- lathiat 4y agoYou used to be able to search “ip address” and get it direct. That also disappeared maybe a year or so ago. Annoying as all the other major hits at covered in ads.
- codyogden 4y agoThe query "my ip address" still works for me. https://www.google.com/search?q=my+ip+address https://www.google.com/search?q=my+ip+address
- lathiat 4y agoThat still works thanks :)
- Rastonbury 4y agoGotta get that adsense revenue
- b0afc375b5 4y agoI was planning on creating a timer on my home page anyway. At the very least I'm thankful for google for the timer. It has served me well on many occasions. Rest in peace.
- thenerdhead 4y agoImagine removing a timer that helps all types of professions(teachers, parents, therapists, etc) to make more money. Almost as if the mission statements conflict with each other to the point where a creator’s timer on YouTube leads to more selling of ads and thus makes them incentivized to remove it from search entirely. https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach Hopefully is a fluke. I’ll be moving on if it’s not.
- kevincox 4y agoThis is almost certainly an accident. I remember when the Search SRE team got paged because some simple math formula wasn't giving am answer box. Something like 42+7 giving 49. Turns out that this was getting classified as "porn seeking" and giving an empty results page if Safe Search was on. This probably would have never been noticed if there wasn't a end-to-end prober test because this particular formula was an example in the Google Home instruction pamphlet. Search is very a complex system and quite possibly there is a poor SRE looking into this right now.
- airstrike 4y ago> Something like 42+7 giving 49. Turns out that this was getting classified as "porn seeking" Sounds like the results were either 34 or 69, then...
- kevincox 4y agoI don't remember if the exact cause was ever nailed down (Yay ML). One of the leading theories is that "42 7" (or whatever the formula was) was on some porn video descriptions. Who knows if that is what tipped the scales.
- SergeAx 4y agoWhat is it with number 34? Google search gives some "angel numbers" and other numerology.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- christophilus 4y agoI’ve found DuckDuckGo’s timer to be useful. I just type “15 minute timer” into my address bar and go about my business.
- rthomas6 4y agoStill works on duck duck go. :)
- ktzar 4y agoIt all started to go down when they went public. There's no ethos anymore.
- permo-w 4y agohas that ever not happened to any company? milton friedman has a lot to answer for
- nso 4y agoThey also recently removed the phone finder. I often used to Google "where is my phone" and use the quick widget. That's now gone.
- ita 4y agoOh no. I use this feature all the time
- ec109685 4y agoHeh, the first result now is a YouTube view w/ ads.
- twobitshifter 4y agoIs it a feature that has gone app only? I can’t imagine you can no longer say “hey google set a 5 minute timer” since that’s one of the key use cases of digital assistants.
- thecosmicfrog 4y ago"Remind me to <thing> at <time>" has been dead for a while now too. I would use this several times daily.
- airstrike 4y agoCan tell Siri to remind you instead. Probably covers 75% of my Siri usage, with the remainder being: asking about the weather, turning lights on / off, and disabling Wi-Fi (as opposed to the soft disable nonsense Apple rolled out years ago)
- daannng 4y agoWhat do you mean? This still works fine with Google Assistant.
- thecosmicfrog 4y agoIt works fine with Google Assistant, but not Google search. It used to be so easy (on desktop at least) to open a new browser tab, type "remind me to..." and click Enter. The experience was so seamless, and I could set reminders without my fingers ever leaving my keyboard.
- pll515 4y ago
- switchstance 4y agoWhy wouldn’t they remove it? It’s in their best interest to send you to an alternative page where they can show you advertisements.
- teekert 4y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=6+minute+timer&t=fpas&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=6+minute+timer&t=fpas&ia=answer
- mgdlbp 4y agoA few years ago, Bing had a bunch of tools for developers: base64/HTML/URL codec, ASCII table, QR code generator, color picker, formatters, even the ability to run code in the browser on the servers of an online judge (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11450385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11450385) One day they all just disappeared. I actually wasn't the only one who noticed (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bing/what-happened-to-the-tools-for-developers/m-p/2273389 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-bing/what-h...) I think I know why: the Bing blog implies that most of it was the passion project of a couple of summer interns in 2015. Probably it simply broke at some point, and no one was around to even notice. https://blogs.bing.com/search/2015/09/02/bing-rocks-two-new-tools-for-the-everyday-musician/ https://blogs.bing.com/search/2015/09/02/bing-rocks-two-new-... https://blogs.bing.com/search/2015/10/08/bing-adds-more-tools-for-developers/ https://blogs.bing.com/search/2015/10/08/bing-adds-more-tool... Here's a larger list of Bing's search features in various domains from 2018. Most are now inactive. There apparently was a timer as well. https://old.reddit.com/r/bing/comments/9oct9o/psa_search_for_education_on_bing_to_bring_up_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/bing/comments/9oct9o/psa_search_for...
- fuckcensorship 4y agoBased on the sources you linked, summer interns only worked on the guitar tuner and metronome functionality. I see no indication in the second blog post you linked that the same interns (or interns at all for that matter) had anything to do with the development of the color picker, encoders, etc.
- chatmasta 4y agoIf anyone is looking for these kinds of developer tools, here is my favorite, which I use on a daily basis: https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/ https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/
- divbzero 4y agoDuckDuckGo still supports all of those developer tools: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=base64+foo https://duckduckgo.com/?q=base64+foo https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+code+foo https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+code+foo https://duckduckgo.com/?q=color+picker https://duckduckgo.com/?q=color+picker https://duckduckgo.com/?q=json+formatter https://duckduckgo.com/?q=json+formatter Along with the timer from OP: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=6+minute+timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=6+minute+timer
- Havoc 4y agoI’m told this saves 200k stopwatches per financial quarter
- superb-owl 4y agoThis is probably a temporary glitch. Google search is a complicated ecosystem, and fails gracefully. My guess is it'll be back up by Monday.
- thement_ 4y agoI've noticed it stopped working about a month ago. That's why I made my own: https://github.com/thement/figlet-timer https://github.com/thement/figlet-timer
- esher 4y agoWorkaround: macOS Ventura has a Clock.app including a Timer. It can be set from Spotlight.
- nicksardo 4y agoShameless plug: I created https://chronograph.io https://chronograph.io back in 2014 so people can share accurate, live stopwatches and timers. Other sites "share" by putting the start epoch & duration in a url querystring; Chronograph is one of the first to actually share a session with concurrent edits. Of the years, it's found a variety of use cases: - Online scrum meetings. - Recording starts & stops of races when they're geographically separated. - Coordination of breaks between language interpreters. - Syncing of podcast recording with multiple guests. - Video game twitchers to broadcast when they'll play
- taywrobel 4y agoTiny amount of UI feedback; I automatically wanted to click “cloud-synchronized” at the top to find out how it works technically, since the text is blue and I’d expect it to be a link. May be better to just italicize or bold that rather than change the color. Or better yet, actually make it a link to a short “how does it work” page
- nicksardo 4y agoI'll do that, thanks. I've never had feedback that's indicated people wanted to know. It uses NTP's clock synchronization algorithm to get the servers' time. This is done over a websocket as it's twice as fast as a typical ajax request/response. Then all changes are made using the browser's idea of server time. At the bottom of the page, you can see your computer/phone's time offset and precision.
- lindig 4y agoThat's a great service. I can think of various features to support more use cases: * provide an optional label - for the use case where several clocks are used and shared. * start and share several stop watches from a single page: start them one by one or together. For a race with multiple participants that either start sequentially or together. * Support taking split times. * Combine timer and stopwatch: count down from a set time, then start the stopwatch at zero. It currently does this already. This supports races like sailing where the actual start is preceded by a countdown period.
- ngcc_hk 4y agoYou can’t trust Google. Period.
- ricardo81 4y agoHad noticed their 'mortgage calculator' had disappeared for a few months, at least in the UK. It's since been revived.
- saagarjha 4y agoSounds like this was the first thing Google killed in its Simplicity Sprint.
- 28304283409234 4y agoNo love for https://e.ggtimer.com/6minutes https://e.ggtimer.com/6minutes ?
- 0x69420 4y agothank god honestly i really dislike the prospect of a search engine turning into a one-stop shop; im convinced (intuitively, with absolutely zero hard evidence), that settling on an instinctive default of "punch it into google" rots the brain, maybe because when i was young my dad asked why the hell i was typing $WEBSITE into the browser search bar (remember when those were separate?) instead of just entering website.com directly into the url bar
- dannyw 4y agoNow that it's on the front page of HN, it will probably be fixed and come back within two workdays.
- chrismcb 4y agoIt would be nice if this was a link that explained what happened. Right now the link is to search and that didn't tell me anything. Presumably it used to pop up a timer, but how am I supposed to know that?
- adham-omran 4y agoM-x org-timer-set-timer then.
- summerlight 4y agoUnless it was found late, I guess it's not an intentional launch but a bug. Today is Sunday and I believe Search prohibits making any significant production changes from happening Friday~Sunday.
- jupp0r 4y agoGoogle Home is still doing timers, which happens to be my main use case for it.
- effingwewt 4y agoWhat was that people were saying about Google doing things different with their C++ replacement? This right here is just one more reason why I will never trust google. If it's not ads it's not pertinent.
- butz 4y agoNothing of value was lost, considering that opening after opening google.com you have to dismiss cookies page, and do it every time if you, as you should, use google.com in private mode.
- anewpersonality 4y ago
- ddp26 4y agoThis could be due to this functionality moving to the Google Assistant. If you have a Pixel phone, you can have two "Google search bars". I have one at the top of my homescreen (Google Search) and one at the bottom (Google Assistant). The one at the top sometime can't handle tasks like "set a timer"! IIRC, Search and Assistant used to be almost identical, but they keep diverging.
- edub 4y agoSearch Engine Roundtable reported it on July 21st (crediting Deccan Herald from the 20th) and said that Danny Sullivan is looking into it: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-timer-stopwatch-stop-33790.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-timer-stopwatch-s...
- ChrisArchitect 4y agomore like it's moved directly and solely into Google Assistant options. This is for a number of handy utilities that used to be available directly from search. Another example is ability to set a calendar reminder directly from a search "remind me tuesday at 8am". Annoying but part of larger push to funnel all of these queries that started as search into Assistant. (annoying because why do I have to use voice to do the query etc)
- ernie24 4y agoDuckDuckGo has a nice timer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=25+minutes+timer&hps=1&atb=v325-1&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=25+minutes+timer&hps=1&atb=v325-1&... Recently I've started using Kagi (I love it) and I am slightly dissapointed that it does not have any.
- jfoster 4y agoI had some fun making this over the past few hours: https://tocktimer.com https://tocktimer.com It's a bit rough around the edges still, but I'll try to improve it a bunch over the next few days, especially so if Google are not bringing back their timer.
- jaimex2 4y agoFind my phone also seems to be dead.
- svnpenn 4y agoFYI Windows has a built in tool "Alarms & Clock", which includes a Clock, Timer and Stopwatch. I use it pretty much every day.
- dannysullivan 4y agoI work for Google Search. Yes, we’re looking into this.
- dannysullivan 4y agoI work for Google Search. Yes, we’ve been looking into this.
- danicriss 4y agohttps://www.timer-tab.com/ https://www.timer-tab.com/ open source and you can customise it to any YouTube video you want, like a nightingale song for example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlIbNrki5o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlIbNrki5o
- arthurdd 4y agoI've hacked together my own replacement, as a mini project on my blog: https://arthurdick.com/blog/timer/ https://arthurdick.com/blog/timer/