I found a Google Search bug in Safari on iOS. Or rather, a StopTheMadness customer found the bug and reported it to me. I investigated and determined, to my relief, that the bug wasn't mine, because I could (eventually) reproduce it with StopTheMadness disabled. The question is, how do I report this bug to Google? They have a public issue tracker, but I don't see a component for Google Search. With no better alternative coming to mind, I decided to blog it! After all, Google does index my blog, so technically speaking, a Google bot has likely already seen my bug report and filed it away in Google's systems. Hopefully a Google human, or "Googler", will also read this blog post and take some kind of humanoid action.
As far as I can tell, the bug is specifically with Google Images Search. In short, the bug is that the Search button in the iOS software keyboard is nonfunctional. On the other hand, the Go button is still functional. The HTML enterkeyhint attribute determines whether the keyboard has a Search button (enterkeyhint="search") or a Go button (enterkeyhint="go"). It seems to be somewhat random whether I get a Search button or a Go button in Google Images Search. I'll show a series of screenshots below to illustrate the bug. I start with a blank Google Images Search.
I tap inside the search field. Note that I get a Search button in the keyboard.
I enter a search phrase, for example, "example". (Yes, I am very imaginative!)
Finally I press the Search button.
But it doesn't search for "example"! Instead it just clears the search field. How rude.
Now let's see what happens with the Go button. Again I start with a blank Google Images Search.
I enter the search phrase "example".
And I press the Go button.
This time it works! So I can go, but I can't search.
That's my bug report. It's not quite as "technical" as some of my other blog posts, but at least there are a lot of pretty pictures. I now eagerly await a fix from Google.
Googlers, assemble!