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Comment by Goronmon | Hacker News Reader

Forget making fun of people Googling for "facebook" or "gmail" instead of using the simple URLs.

I do this all the time actually.

I know a guy, mid-twenties, who if wanting to search for something will type "google" in the chrome address bar, enter, click the top hit, then search from the recognisable google homepage.

It drives me insane.

That is how the internet is supposed to work.

This could be a coping strategy actually. Yahoo japan is notorious for throwing up overlays on their web properties that if accidentally tapped, force your default search engine to yahoo. How do you get back to google if you have no idea where to fix this? just type google. first result.

That's fine if it works for you. I won't judge.

I just mentioned it because I've had several people, both on- and offline, mention it as a symptom of poor technical understanding of how the Internet works. In truth, I think it's more a matter of convenience and habit.

"wiki <your term here>" ;)

I did this as well, but only until I discovered DuckDuckGo.

Every browser I know can use site-specific search engines (or google searches with site: prefixes, whatever) with keywords, giving you the same experience.

To wikipede something, I write "w <something>" into my address bar.

As a bonus I also have tv tropes, a forum I frequent, etc. etc. in there.

Firefox, Opera, yes. But how do you do this in Chromium/Chrome?

As you type it will often suggest the site specific search engine if you've used their search before.

You can also edit the custom search engine list in Chrome's options. I set mine to search Wikipedia on "wiki <term>" and WolframAlpha on "wolf <term>"

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