The time filter in Google Search broke a few days ago

(mastodon.online)

30 points | by latexr 3 hours ago ago

15 comments

  • nubinetwork 6 minutes ago
  • vintagedave 2 hours ago

    Sometimes I wonder what testing these giant companies do for features.

    A week ago Facebook's language translation broke. Results come back in the original language or a mix. How could no-one notice?

    • ttctciyf 4 minutes ago

      Yes! As a frequent user of youtube queues, it feels like they have a dedicated team of one or two junior devs to futz around with it on a weekly basis and zero QA, because it is always breaking in new, unexpected ways.

      "Everything is broken" used to mean "all software is insecure because the inherent complexity of a modern software stack ensures it's beyond the abilities of the average developer to eliminate all attack vectors" [1].

      Now it just means [2].

      1: https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1

      2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pndhO5DcSI0

    • embedding-shape an hour ago

      > testing these giant companies do for features

      I think they all got rid of QA, and developers don't have enough time to actually care about what they're building/fixing.

      GitHub/Microsoft is incredible at this. The feature for selecting and closing multiple PRs was broken for weeks even after I and others reported it. I saw duplicate "A user you've blocked has contributed to this repository" warnings (two of them, one above the other) for weeks too before that was fixed.

      I've stopped reporting issues as well, as it seems to have no effect on how quick it takes, so I don't think it's an issue of not being aware of them.

      • latexr 32 minutes ago

        Something I’ve also noticed is the number badge for open issues and pull requests not disappearing for a long while.

        This is particularly annoying to me as I address everything in my repos quickly, but then the badge remains there making me think something new was opened, and then I keep clicking to find nothing. Or in one case I ignored something which was there because I thought it was bugging out as usual.

        • embedding-shape 26 minutes ago

          Yeah, large companies like to really excel at specifically the eventual part of "eventual consistency", and without proper testing of production latencies, lots of UIs just end up broken, buggy and janky.

          I don't know if I just got seriously grumpy over time/with experience, but everything user-facing just seems so crap nowadays, unless it's made by a smaller company who actually seem to care even a tiny bit.

        • jasoncartwright 18 minutes ago

          It's annoyingly disconcerting. A simple database row count apparently now difficult in 2026.

          • malfist 13 minutes ago

            Don't worry, I've vibe coded a new database system and it'll save us (and net me a nice promo)

    • StilesCrisis an hour ago

      Google typically has very, very thorough tests.

      I don't have any insider information here, but it's likely that the creator of this menu is long gone (it looks old!) and this feature is in maintenance mode. Someone--or a bot--just trying to keep the build green may have disabled the test without understanding that it was pointing to a real issue.

      • embedding-shape an hour ago

        > trying to keep the build green may have disabled the test without understanding

        > Google typically has very, very thorough tests.

        Yeah, sure sounds like they have figured out this whole testing thing perfectly well, if that's the case :)

    • chrisjj 2 hours ago

      Or they noticed but cannot be bothered to fix.

    • buakaw_ 2 hours ago

      "and we increased test coverage by 10% on Q3" doesn't get you promoted unfortunately

      • StilesCrisis an hour ago

        No, but if you found real issues along the way, it's enough to get a decent review. Search takes their five nines seriously.

  • PunchyHamster an hour ago

    They probably also sent AI on bug hunting quest there too like they were bragging for Chrome...

    • kotaKat 24 minutes ago

      They were looking for another place they could cram Nano's Banana down people's throats.