The Chrome omnibar is perhaps the most useful browser feature ever invented. It becomes your favourite search engine's search box if you enter text that does not look like a valid URL, it transforms itself into the search box of your oft-visited sites at the press of a tab, it also lets you configure/change settings of the browser itself. I use it day and night, and would not exaggerate if I say that this was the primary reason (apart from Google minimalism) that made me switch over from Firefox to Chrome two and a half years ago.
This morning was the first time I was pissed off at the Omnibar. Whenever I searched google using it, I saw a distracting yellow balloon just under it telling me that I have moved, and that I should switch to google.co.in. It gave me a yes/no option, and heck, it never seemed to take no for an answer. It actually accepted a No and closed the balloon, but never seemed to remember it. I made another search, and there it was, to distract me again, the yellow balloon again telling me I had moved.
Believing this was a bug, since I am on the dev channel of Chrome, and having got enough irritated, I accepted Yes, and the balloon never showed me its face again. (I didn't have the time/patience to take a screenshot, but I am sure I'll find many on the web, or I can recreate it on one of the other three computers I have at home, not all mine though) Nevertheless, all my google searches are now directed to the Indian domain after I accepted the balloon message.
Now when I had some time, I decided to revert back to the .com domain using chrome://settings/searchEngines on my favourite omnibar. I changed google.co.in to google.com and searched, but it still redirects me to google.co.in. Went back to the search engines and realised I had changed only the keyword; the url points to {google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s.
And to my utter disbelief, the baseURL cannot be changed. Google forces me to use the Indian domain through the omnibar.
That is a thousand Google -1. I know, they only have a Google +1, another -1.
This morning was the first time I was pissed off at the Omnibar. Whenever I searched google using it, I saw a distracting yellow balloon just under it telling me that I have moved, and that I should switch to google.co.in. It gave me a yes/no option, and heck, it never seemed to take no for an answer. It actually accepted a No and closed the balloon, but never seemed to remember it. I made another search, and there it was, to distract me again, the yellow balloon again telling me I had moved.
Believing this was a bug, since I am on the dev channel of Chrome, and having got enough irritated, I accepted Yes, and the balloon never showed me its face again. (I didn't have the time/patience to take a screenshot, but I am sure I'll find many on the web, or I can recreate it on one of the other three computers I have at home, not all mine though) Nevertheless, all my google searches are now directed to the Indian domain after I accepted the balloon message.
Now when I had some time, I decided to revert back to the .com domain using chrome://settings/searchEngines on my favourite omnibar. I changed google.co.in to google.com and searched, but it still redirects me to google.co.in. Went back to the search engines and realised I had changed only the keyword; the url points to {google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s.
And to my utter disbelief, the baseURL cannot be changed. Google forces me to use the Indian domain through the omnibar.
That is a thousand Google -1. I know, they only have a Google +1, another -1.
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