Ask HN: Search Engine Selector below address bar

1 points by dvduval 6y ago ↗ HN

Rather than always having to switch my default search engine by going through some settings, wouldn't it be nice just to have a set of buttons that I can configure that appear just below the search I make in the address bar? I type in whatever keywords I want, and then I click the icon for the search engine I want to use. For example if I want to search Amazon products, I can click on an Amazon button. If I went to search the Chinese search engine Baidu because I just type something in Chinese that I want to search for, I can do that. And then perhaps if I do nothing, I could just hit enter and get a Google search if that is my default. What would be wrong with that? How do I get this technology? It seems easy enough.

And my default search engine could still display autocomplete possibilities below these buttons.

4 comments

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mtmail 6y ago ↗

What you describe is what Firefox browser already offers by default: https://imgur.com/a/CZeUiSe

dvduval 6y ago ↗

Yes, I'd love to see it as the second line, and the auto complete options. Probably dreaming to think this would be possible in Chrome?

blowski 6y ago ↗

DuckDuckGo’s bangs feature is not far away from this - ‘!auk Harry Potter’ will search for Harry Potter on the Amazon UK site.

I like this idea, but perhaps not as user friendly as a button, and I guess requires I begin with DDG as my search engine rather than whichever one I want to choose.