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Comment by stackcollision | Hacker News Reader

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stackcollision

This is quite possibly the most hilarious bug I've ever seen.

What I really want to know is who the hell actually googles "gmail"? There's a link at the top of the homepage!

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Wait till you hear about the 'Facebook login' fiasco: http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...

"It's not every day you get to watch the birth of an Internet meme"

Yes, yes it is.

In Chrome and Firefox, if you lazily type "gmail" into the address bar rather than "gmail.com" then it will google it for you. I suspect it's rather common, I know I've done it a few times by accident.

By default typing "gmail" in Chrome's omnibar it will autocomplete to "gmail.com" If you've ever typed it out before.

I have watched people google 'gmail' and ignoring the autocomplete, but clicking on the link that comes up in the search. At some point people were told "do it this way" and to change that would require a 30-minute handholding and de-education session.

I consider myself as an experienced internet and computer user, but sometime I simply write "gmail" and then click on the first link instead of writing the ".com". Go figure.

There really isn't a one-to-one mapping between quantity of experience and behavior exhibited.

I just type "mail." and it autocompletes to "mail.google.com".

EDIT: in fact, just typing "m" autocompletes to that...

You'd be surprised at how the normals use the Internet. Searching Google for destinations such as Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, etc is incredibly common.

Using search engines this way is also called "navigational search" and it's still how most of the world navigates the web (even sites they know well and use daily!)

It's basically using search as an additional name resolution layer on top of DNS. Because search is more human-convenient, with a layer of semantic processing free from the rigid technical constraints of DNS names. Which is all great, a useful abstraction, until the semantic layer guesses wrong on what the user actually wanted and the abstraction leaks.

While I'm on my phone it's much easier to just open the browser, type "h" in the search box, auto-complete kicks in, I press the "hacker news" suggestion and then click on the first result in the SERPS which gets me in here. Otherwise I would have to start typing "hn..." something in the browser bar, remember that's not how HN's URL actually looks like, curse and revert to using Google.

however, DNS also has an issue for this particular audience. A simple typo could land you on a completely different site which I think is why navigational searching is more useful for those in a rush or those that can't type. I even find my self doing this time. If I ever need to get to thesaurus.com, I usually just type t, h, e, s and then mash the letters a, u, and r a few times and then end it with an s. it isn't that it is hard to spell, but I just find it easier and Google seems to almost always get what I am trying to type so quickly that spelling it correctly wouldn't really make it much faster

You missed the best one that I see almost daily. Typing 'Google' in the search bar. With a cap of course.

This is truly hilarious. Just imagine - some guy, in the middle of nowhere, sitting in front of his computer and suddenly his smartphone starts vibrating with notification about new email. And vibrating.... and vibrating... and after dozens of minutes, he got call. And the caller ask you: Hey, don't you get some emails lately?:D

What I really want to know is who the hell actually googles "gmail"? There's a link at the top of the homepage!

You'd be surprised at what some people do (on laptops and desktops). I've seen ones who refuse to type URLs in the address bar, with the sole exception of google.com, which they then use to type in the URL for the site they're looking for.

They don't even realize the search bar on the top right exists.

Quite a few browsers do not have a "search bar on the top right".

They use a single field for both URL and search.

I know someone who uses the search bar in the top right to google for "google.com", which they then use to search for "yahoo", then having arrived at yahoo's front page, they search for "mail" to get to yahoo mail. Apparently typing "mail.yahoo.com" into the address bar (or just typing "mail" and having it auto-complete) is "too complicated"...

(I presume that this sort of person is who the GNOME UI team think of when they talk about "average user"? :|)

I've watched people go to the firefox homepage (which is Google) and google google, then click on a sponsored ad. I've also seen people go to bing and bing google go to google then google hotmail and then go to hotmail.

I'm a bit at a lose for words...

I have to say: I've done user testing with (probably hundreds of) users over the years, and I'd say the majority (anecdata) of users never type a URL or use a bookmark - typing 'facebook' or 'gmail' into Google is a very common thing. Incomprehensible as this may be to us nerds, it's a very real thing.

I never type website addresses in browser :) I just type phrases like "gmail", "hacker news" or "stanchart india" in Chrome/Firefox omnibox and then click the first/correct search result. I kind of use Google search as way to avoid typos in addresses that may lead of phishing sites.

Finding the search box on google.com, typing gmail and typing enter and then clicking on a large link in bold is a lot easier than clicking successfully on a small subtle link on the top of page.

It's also a lot less error prone than typing gmail.com into the address bar, which could be missed typed as gail.com, mail.com, etc.

I've never clicked on that link.

Different people have different habits. I generally google find most sites unless it's an easy URL or autocompleted. I sometimes even type things like "hack new" on my phone to get here.

(I don't want to make it too easy to get here, if you're wondering why I haven't bookmarked it. Can be a time sink)

On some mobile browsers, such as Chrome on my Nexus 7, it doesn't show gmail at the top of the page.up.

This is what you get if you type "gmail" into chrome's location bar.

People feel a lot of pressure to fill in prompts with blinking cursors.

I do it sometimes by accident, mainly when incognito or on another computer. Alt+D->gmail-> enter, so I miss the autocomplete and it does a search.

Try Alt+D->gmail->control+enter next time.

Or even better - host your own email server.

Wow. Just wow.

Apparently old people do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuOBzWF0Aws&feature=youtu.be...

There are some people who actually google... Google.

There is almost certainly a majority that Google google.

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