Until recently, one of the easiest ways to set a timer was to do a Google search for a timer. When you entered a query like “10 minute timer” (10 minute timer), Google was setting up a ten minute timer for you. But last month, news began to appear that the feature was disappearing from Google without any warning. SEORoundTable was one of the first to publish news about the lost timer on July 20, citing tweets from July 18.
While we’re sure you won’t be short of timers elsewhere on the web or with the default apps on iOS and Android, this feature from Google offered a simple and accessible alternative. In addition to the timer, there was also a stopwatch feature in the same widget. Introduced in 2013, this feature had a history of almost ten years.
Google has yet to officially confirm the removal of the feature, so a bug may have caused this feature to be accidentally lost. Danny Sullivan, Google’s general search officer, said they would first look into the issue on July 21, and said almost a week later on July 27 that the team is “still investigating”. If a bug caused this feature to disappear, it seems like a difficult problem to fix.
Considering that it has spent most of the last decade adding more features locally to the search results page, it would be a strange move for Google to intentionally remove the feature. What started as a simple list of links, now includes just about everything from rich pieces of content that attempt to directly answer your search query, to a dedicated box for news, and even more specific features like a built-in price comparison tool for flights.
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