4 ms·

Google Chrome did this in 2008. Full-text search over all visited pages, stored offline. It was very useful and I miss it. Nobody seems to remember it, even th

by jval43 16d ago

Google Chrome did this in 2008. Full-text search over all visited pages, stored offline. It was very useful and I miss it. Nobody seems to remember it, even though it was a headline feature. Was removed in 2013, I think due to technical constraints. Will definitely try this.

corney91 15d ago
Now Chrome can't even remember what addresses you went to more than 90 days ago. It's such a nerfed browser.
- iririririr 15d ago
  Still boggles my mind that people went from ridiculing people who installed Ad companies browser toolbars, to actually running their browser. ...And don't give me the tired "it was faster". this horse was already beaten to death and it was 110% marketing.
  - 93po 15d ago
    When chrome was literally first released it was in fact faster than IE and Firefox, by quite a lot, and had some nice features that neither had, too. But that gap didn't last for long.
    - iririririr 13d ago
      lol. it amuses me how much people are the marketing and now forces themselves to remember it wrobg. when it launched it was fast because it had LESS features.
  - jval43 15d ago
    It was so much faster you could not believe it. It was a revelation and even though "degoogling" was already a thing, Chrome was so much better than the rest that you just had to use it. Tabs actually worked without crashing your PC. The risks were clear from day one but Google and Chrome were great to both users and devs, and it stayed like that for a long time.
xd1936 16d ago
I remember this as well. I hadn't noticed it was gone until just now, but you're right. Edit: Found it. Thanks Claude. https://github.com/ssnangua/google-chrome-comic-hd/blob/main/english/images/19.jpg https://github.com/ssnangua/google-chrome-comic-hd/blob/main... https://dfir.blog/history-index-files-removed-from-chrome-v30/ https://dfir.blog/history-index-files-removed-from-chrome-v3...
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
varispeed 16d ago
> I think due to technical constraints. I think due to shareholders wanting new sportcars. The offline pages don't show Google Ads.
wtallis 16d ago
There was also Google Desktop Search for several years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop
- thereforegrin 15d ago
  with RCE and no privacy
  - TeMPOraL 15d ago
    I.e. like any good tool?
iririririr 15d ago
IE5 only on the mac, did this too.
ericol 15d ago
Not sure if the same product. I think the one I used was Google Desktop. I even hacked it for a company I was working for at the time: I installed it in a machine that had a lot of pdfs from some other client company of them. I don't recall the exact details, but I did some sort of proxying between the Microsoft Web Server that came with NT? at the time and G Desktop, and then an entire team of first support agents had almost instant search across all those docs. Good times.
TeMPOraL 15d ago
Now we have no browser capable of searching in anything - not even Firefox. I routinely try, in several browser, to find a tab among open tabs, a bookmark among open bookmarks, or a history entry (both from "omnibox" and dedicated history pane), and it never seems to find it - not by name, not by URL - until it gets a 100% unique match. It's like there's a timer or a cache somewhere, with aggressive limit, saying "only scan these top 100 results and then abort if it takes more than 10 ms to findf anything", or something. Making this completely useless. That's on top of occasional deletion of browsing history past few weeks.
- vbarrielle 15d ago
  Have you tried searching with @tabs, @bookmarks or @history? It works reasonably well for me.
  - TeMPOraL 15d ago
    Yes. Try it regularly, against inputs I know correspond to things visited or bookmarked within last couple months. Almost never gives the actual result unless it's literal full-string match. That's why I'm complaining.
- negura 15d ago
  Maybe stop using the mickey mouse browsers? I mean Firefox is pretty much a lost cause.. unless you start using extensions. I agree those are basic features that should be built-in. In qutebrowser I use them reliably all the time. E.g press T (keybinding for :tab-focus command) - type keyword (matches against tab ID, page title, page URL & the tab's process ID) - press Tab - menu is populated with results - cycle through them using Tab/Shift+Tab - press Enter to jump to it. Similar workflow for history, different bookmark types, etc. History can also be loaded as an HTML page and jumped through with regex, etc. If you want to stick with
- arantius 14d ago
  For things I access often, the Firefox address bar does function like a near-perfect search for me. Some things I type [ab cd] and the page with the words _starting_ ab and cd pops right up. A while back I looked up a manual for an old Singer sewing machine, which turned out to be the model 15. So I typed [sin 15] in the address bar and -- yep, first result! A week ago I looked into the game Metroid Dread. Typed [met dre] and two relevant pages from my history came up, immediately. I don't know what you mean by "100% unique match" but, this feature works for me, and in fact I regularly use it and find it very worthwhile.

by jval43 16d ago

corney91 15d ago

Now Chrome can't even remember what addresses you went to more than 90 days ago. It's such a nerfed browser.

iririririr 15d ago
Still boggles my mind that people went from ridiculing people who installed Ad companies browser toolbars, to actually running their browser. ...And don't give me the tired "it was faster". this horse was already beaten to death and it was 110% marketing.
- 93po 15d ago
  When chrome was literally first released it was in fact faster than IE and Firefox, by quite a lot, and had some nice features that neither had, too. But that gap didn't last for long.
  - iririririr 13d ago
    lol. it amuses me how much people are the marketing and now forces themselves to remember it wrobg. when it launched it was fast because it had LESS features.
- jval43 15d ago
  It was so much faster you could not believe it. It was a revelation and even though "degoogling" was already a thing, Chrome was so much better than the rest that you just had to use it. Tabs actually worked without crashing your PC. The risks were clear from day one but Google and Chrome were great to both users and devs, and it stayed like that for a long time.

xd1936 16d ago

I remember this as well. I hadn't noticed it was gone until just now, but you're right. Edit: Found it. Thanks Claude. https://github.com/ssnangua/google-chrome-comic-hd/blob/main/english/images/19.jpg https://github.com/ssnangua/google-chrome-comic-hd/blob/main... https://dfir.blog/history-index-files-removed-from-chrome-v30/ https://dfir.blog/history-index-files-removed-from-chrome-v3...

deleted 16d ago
[deleted]

varispeed 16d ago

> I think due to technical constraints. I think due to shareholders wanting new sportcars. The offline pages don't show Google Ads.

wtallis 16d ago

There was also Google Desktop Search for several years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop

thereforegrin 15d ago
with RCE and no privacy
- TeMPOraL 15d ago
  I.e. like any good tool?

iririririr 15d ago

IE5 only on the mac, did this too.

ericol 15d ago

Not sure if the same product. I think the one I used was Google Desktop. I even hacked it for a company I was working for at the time: I installed it in a machine that had a lot of pdfs from some other client company of them. I don't recall the exact details, but I did some sort of proxying between the Microsoft Web Server that came with NT? at the time and G Desktop, and then an entire team of first support agents had almost instant search across all those docs. Good times.

TeMPOraL 15d ago

Now we have no browser capable of searching in anything - not even Firefox. I routinely try, in several browser, to find a tab among open tabs, a bookmark among open bookmarks, or a history entry (both from "omnibox" and dedicated history pane), and it never seems to find it - not by name, not by URL - until it gets a 100% unique match. It's like there's a timer or a cache somewhere, with aggressive limit, saying "only scan these top 100 results and then abort if it takes more than 10 ms to findf anything", or something. Making this completely useless. That's on top of occasional deletion of browsing history past few weeks.

vbarrielle 15d ago
Have you tried searching with @tabs, @bookmarks or @history? It works reasonably well for me.
- TeMPOraL 15d ago
  Yes. Try it regularly, against inputs I know correspond to things visited or bookmarked within last couple months. Almost never gives the actual result unless it's literal full-string match. That's why I'm complaining.
negura 15d ago
Maybe stop using the mickey mouse browsers? I mean Firefox is pretty much a lost cause.. unless you start using extensions. I agree those are basic features that should be built-in. In qutebrowser I use them reliably all the time. E.g press T (keybinding for :tab-focus command) - type keyword (matches against tab ID, page title, page URL & the tab's process ID) - press Tab - menu is populated with results - cycle through them using Tab/Shift+Tab - press Enter to jump to it. Similar workflow for history, different bookmark types, etc. History can also be loaded as an HTML page and jumped through with regex, etc. If you want to stick with
arantius 14d ago
For things I access often, the Firefox address bar does function like a near-perfect search for me. Some things I type [ab cd] and the page with the words _starting_ ab and cd pops right up. A while back I looked up a manual for an old Singer sewing machine, which turned out to be the model 15. So I typed [sin 15] in the address bar and -- yep, first result! A week ago I looked into the game Metroid Dread. Typed [met dre] and two relevant pages from my history came up, immediately. I don't know what you mean by "100% unique match" but, this feature works for me, and in fact I regularly use it and find it very worthwhile.