This upcoming change could make searching on Chromebooks more frustrating

Google is currently testing the ability to include helpful solutions to common Chromebook questions in the device’s launcher for quick access. With just one tap of the ‘Everything button‘, you will soon be able to find anything that exists over on the company’s Chromebook Support forum. The same information exists via the ‘Get Help’ section of the Explore app which is built directly into your Chromebook, and this is what the launcher is pulling from in order to present you with said information for those who have the developer flag enabled.

I actually reported on this back in March, and have been testing it extensively. While this may prove to be useful for anyone who is new to Chrome OS, I’m personally becoming quite frustrated with it. Sure, I could just disable the flag, but Google likely intends to roll this out on a mass scale after it’s done testing it, and then it will become the standard functionality. The issue I take with it is simple and so is the fix – Any time you search for something, the Help results appear first.

I’m probably not alone in the fact that I use my launcher for searching the web and on-device applications or web apps first, and by probably, I mean I’m in the 99%. I believe that when and if I intend to search for a solution to an issue I’m having, I would be more willing to peer down the list of query results with my eyes and click the appropriate one if it means that my web results and apps appear first instead.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tapped the Everything button, typed in something I wanted to search on Google, and then smacked the ‘Enter’ button out of habit only to have the Explore app open up instead! It’s extremely annoying, and I hope this changes before the feature sees full implementation.

I get that showing help articles linked to the inbuilt application are extremely useful out of the box for newcomers, but for everyday computing, this is unacceptable, in my opinion. The core of the Chrome OS experience is searching, and Google will messing with the DNA of its product by slowing down the tempo at which a user interacts with it.

Are you like me and search for something, hit enter, and go about your way because you rely on web and app results appearing first, or do you type, stop and read everything, and then click with your mouse? Let’s discuss this in the comments! Again, this flag is not fully implemented, and I wanted to bring attention to this before Google makes what I feel would be a big mistake by pushing it out as an official feature.