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Comment by TheMaskedCoder | Hacker News Reader

How are people supposed to use features like this if they get dropped and re-added from time to time? If I want a convenient timer, googling "set 5 minute timer" has no advantage if I don't know whether it will work or not. Inconsistency is an enemy of convenience.

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I agree with you in general but not in this particular case. Best case scenario: you get a five minute timer running right away. Worst case scenario: you click the first link and get a five minute timer right away

First link would be ad-filled, SEO gamed bullshit.

Yup, something undesirable that will probably still work while Google Timer is "down."

Basically the first page of any Google search page is ads now.

If I want a quick 5 minute timer, it’s just a “Hey Siri” away. Navigating to Google to type a query is strictly inferior.

Screw those people for trying to monetize something you’re expecting to use for free. Your phone and computer have the capability to do timers. Why are you googling a timer with this attitude in the first place?

> Your [...] computer has the capability to do timers

Source? At least on macOS, i'm not aware of any built in timer or stopwatch.

  sleep 300; tput bel

or even

  timer() { sleep $1 ; i=$2; until [ $i -eq 0 ]; do tput bel; sleep 1; i=$((i-1)); done }
  timer 300 10

https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/07/macos-ventura-clock-timers/

Your software never has bugs? We definitely had to turn something off before because something didn't line up/someone messed up planning during a bigger tech transition. This stuff happens in big orgs ran by humans, I'm happy that it's back and it's a lot better than the first result in any case.

I know that software is fiendishly difficult, but if you think a parent is ever going to put their child in a software driven car, then the industry had probably better get a bit more serious.

This doesn't make any sense. "Software" isn't produced by a single company with a single set of engineering practices and trade-offs. Safety-critical software has been around for decades and decades, and it's not developed and tested using the same practices as a minuscule D-list feature of a web service.

A lesson that Boeing apparently needed a refresher on.

It does make sense, you just disagree on whether it’s actionable or not.

I already put my kids in a software driven car every day. It has automatic cruise control, automatic lane keeping, and automatic emergency braking. I don't trust Tesla's Autopilot yet but as soon as there is a self-driving car which I believe is safer than a car driven by me, I will switch to that.

Is it inconsistent? Even if it isn't google's timer, you still get results for timers provided by other websites, if you google search for "set 5 minute timer".

Still bitter about reader over here, friend.

this this this!

On the other hand I doubt many more people noticed that it went away than ppl on HN who saw the previous thread. So now they've all been re-informed and know they can rely on it again.

Why wouldn't I be surprised to see it gone later on? Kudos to Google for reshaping their brand image this way, they made my switch to alternatives much easier.

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