The Old Google Image Search in Chrome

There's a weird regression in Google Image Search if you use Chrome 27+ and enable "Extended Instant API" in chrome://flags. Extended Instant is a feature I've mentioned a few months ago and it's still a work in progress. It integrates Chrome with Google Search, replaces the new tab page with a special version of the Google homepage and removes the navigation bar and the search box from Google's search pages.

Back to Google Image Search. For some reason, when Extended Instant is enabled, Google Image Search switches to the old interface: thumbnails are smaller and you can mouse over to see more details about the images. When you click an image result, Google sends you to a new page that loads the original image file.

Google's Red Sign In Button

Google now shows a red "sign in" button on the homepage, at the top of the search results pages, in Google Maps, Google News, Google Translate and many other services.

The button is a lot more visible than the old gray "sign in" button.

Here's the Google Image Search homepage in Internet Explorer. The red button clearly stands out from all the other promotional messages.

After the Gmail sign in page, Google's standard sign in page also has a new interface: "One password. All of Google. Want to enjoy the best of Google? Just stay signed in. One username and password is all you need to unlock more features from services you use every day, like Gmail, Maps, Google+, and YouTube."

{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Open Gmail Links Using Google Apps in iOS

The latest version of the Gmail app for iOS added a feature that opens links using other Google apps: Chrome, Google Maps and YouTube, assuming you've already installed them. It works well for Google Maps links and YouTube links, but not that well for other links: some open using Chrome, but most links open using the internal browser of the Gmail app.

If you don't like this feature, you can disable it by tapping the settings icon next to the account switcher, picking Google Apps and unchecking the apps you don't want to handle Gmail links.

You can't change the default browser in iOS, but some Google apps include an option to use Chrome. For example, the YouTube app opens all the links using Chrome, if you've installed the app, and you can disable this feature from the settings. When you open a page from a Google app like YouTube, Gmail or Google+, Chrome shows a button that sends you to the previous app, just like the Android back button.

Google Image Search Shows the Images From a Page

There are many extensions and applications that let you see all the images from a web page. Another way to do that is to use Google Image Search. Search for [site:URL], where URL is the address of the page. This doesn't work for domain names, subdomains and subdirectories because Google shows the images for all the URLs that start with the name you've entered.

Example: [site:http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html].

It's not a new feature, it's just another way to use the site: operator.

Finding HTC One Using Google and Bing

When HTC named its latest flagship phone HTC One, I wasn't sure if it was a great idea. It's hard to find information about HTC One when there are so many pages about HTC One X, HTC One S, HTC One V and a few other phones with similar names.

Almost 3 months after HTC announced its phone, I tried 3 basic queries using Google and Bing: [htc one], [htc one review] and [htc one price]. I've switched to the US English interface and made sure that the results aren't influenced by personalization. All the screenshots show the first Bing results on the left side and the first Google results on the right side. For some of the screenshots, I scrolled down past the ads.

The results for [htc one]:

Bing's top organic result is the HTC One X homepage and the HTC One homepage is not even in the top 50 results. All Google results from the first page are about HTC One and the first result is the right one.

The results for [htc one review]:

The top 3 Bing results are HTC One X reviews, while all Google results from the first page are about HTC One.

The results for [htc one price]:

The first Bing result is about HTC One V and the third one is about One X, One S and One V. Google's results are relevant.

It's not clear if Google does a better job because it favours recent results or because it realizes that HTC One is a different entity. When searching for [htc one], the first Google result about One X is at #38.

YouTube Tests a New Carousel UI for the Homepage

YouTube experiments with a new homepage interface that groups multiple videos from the same channel or topic. You can click the small thumbnails to switch to a different video or click the "play" button to watch the entire playlist.

{ thanks, Rubén. }

Artificial Google Suggestions

The suggestions that are diplayed when you type a Google search query are useful most of the time. Google tries to finish your query and suggests some popular queries that start with the keywords you've typed.

Sometimes Google also shows suggestions from web pages and many of them are pretty long and verbose. They look artificial because it's unlikely that many users typed them. Google compiles a list of popular n-grams from web pages and includes them in the list of Google Instant suggestions. You'll find page titles, excerpts from Wikipedia articles and press releases, but also incomplete suggestions that don't make any sense.

It's easy to spot these artificial suggestions: type a long query until Google no longer shows suggestions, type more keywords and Google will suddenly show long suggestions.

Here are some of them:

In the last example I've searched for ["the * why it's inaccurate"] and started to type a new word after "the", when I saw these absurdly detailed suggestions. If you search for [why would it be inaccurate], Google shows a single suggestion: [why would it be inaccurate to speak of an nacl molecule]. You need to type [why would it be inaccurate to call t] to see this suggestion: [why would it be inaccurate to call the pituitary gland the master gland of the body]. This long phrase can't be found in any web page, but it shows up because Google merges various word sequences.