"The Billion Dollar Line of Javascript"

Supposedly, "A large number of users don’t understand the difference between a search engine and the Internet and are unaware of the difference between typing a url or search query in the address bar compared to the search box on Google."

Can this be true?

Comments

[Ted Craig]

It's true. I've seen it. And it's often people under 30, which is really surprising.

[Bob]

I am hardly a novice internet user, but I do this myself. This is especially useful if I type the url wrong, which happens regularly. In such cases "The Google" knows what I want anyway! If you make a typo in the address bar you get a 15 second wait and a 404 error most of the time.

If Google makes money saving me from having to remember whether that url was a .net or a .org, then that's just fine with me.

[JorgXMcKie]

First computers, then the web became 'commodities' and then people tended not to care how they do what they do. (I was arguing this with the purchasing people at my uni back in 1991 or so, and they simply couldn't see it.) People don't know or really care how the transmission, or brakes, or anything else in their car works so long as it gets them where they want to go.

Most of my students (mostly 19=25) know about as much about their computers or the web as they know about their cars, which is pretty much how to use them as long as everything works.

I'm really not sure how I feel about this, but it's inevitable, I think. After all, how many people below the age of 30 really know how to change a tire? (And I'll bet practically none of them know how to repair a tire.)

[Michael Stack]

Yes, this is true. I've seen it with relatives of mine, and with people I've helped train to use the Internet.

[Stuart Buck]

I believe it. Indeed, I've seen the opposite -- someone who searched for everything by just typing the search terms in the address bar.