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Comment by supersillyus | Hacker News Reader

I think what we're seeing here is people no longer search for Facebook on Google; they have started going straight to Facebook, with no Google in between. For lots of folks, Facebook is the internet.

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Exactly this. As hard as I try to be pro-privacy and anti facebook, it's on ever device I own and bookmarked into the very muscle memory of my hands. Where I used to log onto IRC to see what was happening after work, now it's FB instead.

A few months ago Facebook started aggressively suggesting users make it their homepage. Perhaps this is evidence that campaign worked.

Oh, it was aggressive. The only options that were available when the dialog showed up for me, was to either oblige, or to "Skip".

Are you telling me I get hit with aggressive ads every time I login to my bank account? :(

However, for lots of people the Google search box IS the address bar - this is true in both IE and Chrome.

I don't know about IE, but in Chrome you'd have to work at it to actually search for "facebook" rather than going to facebook.com.

Try it. Type "facebook". Heck, on most folks' machines you can just type "f". It'll auto-complete the URL. If you want to actually google for "facebook" you'll have to type "facebook " with a space.

Actually you just type ?facebook to force it to search. This even works with URLs: ?facebook.com

You may be correct but you're missing the point.

Sorry, it was besides the point, not missing the point though.

but with autocomplete, would they be going directly to the URL? or would it complete a search first?

If you aren't sharing your browsing habits with Google or Microsoft, would this behavior show up?

Also, this won't show a 'change' in behavior over the last few months or a year because the address bar has acted as search for some time already.

This would only be accelerated by the explosion of mobile devices with native facebook apps.

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