5 ms·

Because the complexity isn't in the timer, but in adding it to an otherwise massive pile of code that makes the rest of everything run. It's like if you're buil

Because the complexity isn't in the timer, but in adding it to an otherwise massive pile of code that makes the rest of everything run. It's like if you're building a hotel with hundreds of rooms and you decide every room should have an installed alarm clock. The clock mechanism itself you can buy cheaply, but if you want it to look good, match your decor, and not have wires exposed, it's suddenly harder. If it was just a single-use page on timer.google.com, you'd be totally right. But having Search know that "5 minute timer" should show a timer, but "Egg timer" should show a picture of a product, and "new year's eve countdown" should probably give you a timer/countdown, but only on some days of the year, and on others it should be to videos of last year's.

trasz 4y ago
In your example this “decor” is an improvement: it makes using it nicer. Can you tell me how this “fantastic engineering” makes google timer nicer? Because to me it isn’t quite obvious; what is obvious is how it makes it worse, by lowering reliability and invading privacy.
- noirbot 4y ago
  I don't even know what you're trying to say here? If anything, the "decor" in my hotel room metaphor was a metaphor for... decor? I could make a timer that outputs ASCII text for the countdown, but if I put that as the first result in a Google Search results page, it would look weird and out of place. As far as I know, Google having consistent CSS doesn't lower their reliability and invade my privacy. There was never a Google Timer that wasn't a part of search, so it always was going to need to integrate with search. If you just want a website to load with a timer, there's plenty of other options. I get it, you don't like Google, you think they make products that are bad for people and privacy. All of that I mostly agree with. That's a set of complaints that, as far as I can tell, have no relation to if Google Search still has a timer feature. Even if they stripped out all of the tracking and whatever you think is making them not have "reliability", the remaining search engine would still be an impressive and hard to integrate with bit of code. You see this in the cost to develop and run services like Kagi or the belated Runnaroo search engine, both of which were far better about personal privacy and, amusingly, less reliable than Google.
  - freediver 4y ago
    > both of which were far better about personal privacy and, amusingly, less reliable than Google. Less reliable in what way?
    - trasz 4y ago
      In every way. Any Google service can fail for a myriad of reasons, from internet connection problems to some random failure of one of billion fantastic engineering pieces involved, to Google blocking your account for whatever reason, to Google deprecating the service. Compare this with failure modes for the date(1) utility, or a Casio watch, or the default one in your phone. It might be more illustrative to use some more complicated service. Compared with VLC, reliability of YouTube is a joke.
      - freediver 4y ago
        I am afraid I am not following the train of thought. If any Google service can fail at any time, how is some other service less reliable than Google?
        trasz 4y ago
        Sigh, sorry, it should read “more reliable”, or “less prone to failure”; somehow failed to notice this in my previous comment.
  - trasz 4y ago
    So it takes fantastic engineering to fetch a value from a single input box and then echo a string with some CSS around it? :-D Once again - instead of reasoning about the usual piece of the stack try to understand the whole thing - from users’ intent to use it all the way to the timer going off. This is a tiny bit of a 10£ Casio functionality. You shouldn’t need datacentres to replicate that.

trasz 4y ago

In your example this “decor” is an improvement: it makes using it nicer. Can you tell me how this “fantastic engineering” makes google timer nicer? Because to me it isn’t quite obvious; what is obvious is how it makes it worse, by lowering reliability and invading privacy.

noirbot 4y ago
I don't even know what you're trying to say here? If anything, the "decor" in my hotel room metaphor was a metaphor for... decor? I could make a timer that outputs ASCII text for the countdown, but if I put that as the first result in a Google Search results page, it would look weird and out of place. As far as I know, Google having consistent CSS doesn't lower their reliability and invade my privacy. There was never a Google Timer that wasn't a part of search, so it always was going to need to integrate with search. If you just want a website to load with a timer, there's plenty of other options. I get it, you don't like Google, you think they make products that are bad for people and privacy. All of that I mostly agree with. That's a set of complaints that, as far as I can tell, have no relation to if Google Search still has a timer feature. Even if they stripped out all of the tracking and whatever you think is making them not have "reliability", the remaining search engine would still be an impressive and hard to integrate with bit of code. You see this in the cost to develop and run services like Kagi or the belated Runnaroo search engine, both of which were far better about personal privacy and, amusingly, less reliable than Google.
- freediver 4y ago
  > both of which were far better about personal privacy and, amusingly, less reliable than Google. Less reliable in what way?
  - trasz 4y ago
    In every way. Any Google service can fail for a myriad of reasons, from internet connection problems to some random failure of one of billion fantastic engineering pieces involved, to Google blocking your account for whatever reason, to Google deprecating the service. Compare this with failure modes for the date(1) utility, or a Casio watch, or the default one in your phone. It might be more illustrative to use some more complicated service. Compared with VLC, reliability of YouTube is a joke.
    - freediver 4y ago
      I am afraid I am not following the train of thought. If any Google service can fail at any time, how is some other service less reliable than Google?
      - trasz 4y ago
        Sigh, sorry, it should read “more reliable”, or “less prone to failure”; somehow failed to notice this in my previous comment.
- trasz 4y ago
  So it takes fantastic engineering to fetch a value from a single input box and then echo a string with some CSS around it? :-D Once again - instead of reasoning about the usual piece of the stack try to understand the whole thing - from users’ intent to use it all the way to the timer going off. This is a tiny bit of a 10£ Casio functionality. You shouldn’t need datacentres to replicate that.