Google Timer is gone (again) | Hacker News Reader

Google Timer is gone (again)

google.com

33 pointsmdrzn27 comments

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Last time it was gone was 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32295674

And it took about 20 days for it to come back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32555895

Here's two screenshots of my view:

[0] https://i.imgur.com/vcMf3am.png

[1] https://i.imgur.com/JeKuE9R.png

searching for "3m timer" works maybe they changed the string

Doesn't work even with different strings, different words, or different minutes amount.

Works fine here. Only thing I can think of that I have set different than most is I have the "use my activity to help train google search" or whatever that setting is turned off. Basically I have everything I could ever find turned off for google searches to make it as generic as possible.

https://www.google.com/search?q=1+minute+timer https://www.google.com/search?q=2+minute+timer https://www.google.com/search?q=3+minute+timer https://www.google.com/search?q=4+minute+timer https://www.google.com/search?q=5+minute+timer

Only the 3 minute time doesn't show

None of these shows for me.

5 minute timer shows up for me but in a different section of the page

"Fuzzy logic" strikes again.

"Artificial Intelligence", when in reality it is un unintrospectable black box with always changing behaviour, and often not smarter than hand written heuristics.

We'll get another AI winter soon enough.

It’s always sunny in the metaverse

The 1 and 5 minute timers show for me, but they appear after video recommendations. For my display, this is just under my viewport.

For a long time I used Siri as “hey siri, timer, 3 minutes”.

This works for every time except 4 minute because it thinks you’re saying “timer for minutes” without a number.

Got fixed last year though and for some reason wasn’t reproducible for everyone. Not sure if an australian locale issue or something.

I just went to Bing and searched for "timer". Nothing. It's bizarre, if Microsoft wanted to make people use their search engine by choice (rather than force/trick them to set it as default) then why don't they hire the right people to tweak it to make it more appealing?

DuckDuckGo has a timer.[1] It also uses Bing AFAIK. So in a roundabout way, Bing has a timer.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=3+minute+timer

Brave and DDG are the only search engine that seem to have timer widgets.

Works for me, but it is hidden under the Videos results below the fold on the page. Looks like they switched positioning.

It was in the normal position yesterday.

https://i.imgur.com/zSiVYBM.jpeg

That is very interesting. I wonder if it only shows up for some people. You posted your comment two minutes ago, and yet when I go to the page, the timer does not show up anywhere.

Useful information: I am not signed into Google and am running Firefox 105.0.3

I am signed into google using chrome 107.0.5304.63

Brave Version 1.45.113 Chromium: 107.0.5304.62 not signed in and it is below the fold.

Firefox 106.0.2 (64-bit) not logged in and it is below the fold.

term to start the timer was "timer 1 hour".

Curious - works for me (in several different browsers).

(Note for any Googlers who happen to be watching: the full-screen timer display fails rather badly on my MacBook if the time is >= 10 minutes: the time wraps onto two lines and the second is halfway off-screen.)

"3 minute timer" Doesn't work for me. BUT "180 second timer" does. 2 minute / 4 minute also works. So might be bugged on just that one search term.

Works for me with "timer", "5 minute timer" and "10 minute timer"

"3 minute timer" doesn't work; just shows a link to a video for it.

I've been using DDG since the first outage. Works almost the same.

Often making a YouTube video made to be a timer the top choice. Where it probably shows you an ad before you can use the timer. Ugh.

Why would anyone rely on an undocumented easter egg in a product that has nothing to do with timers?

It works for me. I always use "set timer x minutes"

its there.. search for 'timer'

Works for me

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