The Unofficial Google Shell

June 2, 2008 4:52 PM

Hey, command-line nerds! You shell geeks over there! Switch over to your browser and go to goosh.org right now.

A couple things to try first (type everything after the ">"):

> place 6266 W Highway 290, Austin, TX 78735

> news mcclellan

> o 1

> web mcclellan

> images firefox fox

That's right, it's a command-line interface to Google in your browser. You're welcome.

posted by sdodd (51 comments total)

Somewhere, Neal Stephenson just felt a thrill going up his leg.
posted by maudlin at 4:55 PM on June 2, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

This is pretty interesting.
posted by caddis at 4:59 PM on June 2, 2008

I think it's swamped, I am getting timeout errors.
posted by Xoebe at 5:05 PM on June 2, 2008

Nifty. Though I'm yet to quite work out why....
posted by pompomtom at 5:09 PM on June 2, 2008

Needs vi mode.
posted by meehawl at 5:12 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Pretty slick. Really, they should have a Telnet interface, though.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:12 PM on June 2, 2008

Kadin2048, look at the image and map results. That wouldn't work in a Telnet session.
posted by sdodd at 5:20 PM on June 2, 2008

I think we all knew that GUIs were a passing fad.
posted by tkolar at 5:23 PM on June 2, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

Meh. I won't be impressed until they map google to an interface that uses cuneiforn on stone tablets.
posted by googly at 5:26 PM on June 2, 2008

I totally don't get it. Can someone explain for the morons in the house, please?
posted by serazin at 5:28 PM on June 2, 2008

Very cool...
posted by schyler523 at 5:32 PM on June 2, 2008

[e-mail]:/web> images firefox fox | wc -l

just returned a bunch of images

... pos..
posted by xorry at 5:34 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

seriously though, fun!
posted by xorry at 5:34 PM on June 2, 2008

Yeah it's a bit Slashdotted. An hour and a half ago I was using it and loving it because it was so much faster than native Google. Now it's taking about 30 seconds to get search results back to me. I'm hoping people will get bored with it. Also, it needs a green-on-black colour scheme.
posted by Jimbob at 5:43 PM on June 2, 2008

Nice! Wish it displayed more than 4 results at a time, though. Also: press up the up arrow to access your previous commands and use tab to autocomplete :D
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 5:44 PM on June 2, 2008

Yeah, I should have provided more context for the non-nerds. Before it was common to have Graphical User Interfaces (the Window-Icon-Menu-Pointer metaphor) for interacting with computers, the norm was to issue commands by typing in a program's name along with arguments to modify its behavior. This dates back to teletypes -- that is, before computers had monitors. The program that received your input was called a "shell." Today that program runs in its own window on the screen and is called a terminal. The prompt, command, and its arguments are called "the command line."

A minority of computer users spend a significant percentage of their day issuing commands in a terminal window. While the disadvantages versus GUIs are obvious, the command line has some subtle advantages that may be difficult to appreciate without first gaining familiarity with that mode of interaction. This website brings some of those advantages to the one application/service I wish I could use from the command line: Google's search engine.
posted by sdodd at 5:52 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

A minority of computer users spend a significant percentage of their day life issuing commands in a terminal window.
posted by lukemeister at 5:59 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

That's pretty slick there.
posted by delmoi at 5:59 PM on June 2, 2008

I had the pleasure once of logging into and working on an ancient PDP-11 hooked up to an actual line printer/teletype machine. The noise was deafening, and kind of sexy. This web page needs a sound effect option for maximum retro verisimilitude.
posted by meehawl at 6:07 PM on June 2, 2008

Yeah, xorry, integration with a local instance of bash would be cool, but integration with Yahoo Pipes or the equivalent is what's got me drooling. (Seeing as how the Pipes-and-Filters architectural pattern is maybe the chief advantage of the command line.)
posted by sdodd at 6:19 PM on June 2, 2008

Here's a browser based implementation of vi using javascript.

I'd love to see the mash-up of these two, but I don't think I'd know where to begin.
posted by hwestiii at 6:21 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

what kind of extensions does "load" load?
posted by juv3nal at 6:39 PM on June 2, 2008

Ooops ... I tried to read my mail with the "rm" command and just deleted Google.

They got backups, right?
posted by RavinDave at 6:40 PM on June 2, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

[e-mail]:/web> sudo porn

1) How To Hide Your Porn | Mac Geekery
You can just go in terminal, then change to Super User: sudo, then, move your “porn” folder to /var/root/ or /var. So everythine you need it, ...
http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/how_to_hide_your_porn
posted by quonsar at 6:44 PM on June 2, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Jeez quonsar, don't tell everyone....
posted by pompomtom at 6:49 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ooh, ooh, ideafilter: load up Goosh in Mozilla Prism to make it seem even more terminal-like!
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 6:52 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Do I have to link to Dave's Quick Search Deskbar again?
posted by Chuckles at 7:00 PM on June 2, 2008

Yeah, Chuckles, the Deskbar (and similar apps) only launch a search, they don't display the results inline. Being able to scroll up to previous results is really nice -- it breaks the browser history in a useful way. The Goosh integration with the browser is arguably better; e.g., "> o 1" opens a new tab.
posted by sdodd at 7:08 PM on June 2, 2008

Oh me oh my this is fun. How do you get more than four results?
posted by middleclasstool at 7:11 PM on June 2, 2008

Ah, "more!"
posted by middleclasstool at 7:14 PM on June 2, 2008

I have a really lazy way to use Google from a shell:

cat > google << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
w3m http://www.google.com/search?q=$1
EOF
chmod +x google
./google foo+bar+baz

Now I'm tempted to flesh it out into something more useful. Except that that would be, y'know, work. But I'm sorely tempted, because this is really cool.
posted by wtdoor at 7:36 PM on June 2, 2008

See also:

Surfraw
YubNub
posted by Zed_Lopez at 7:53 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is just terrific. I'm going to start using the Internet again.
posted by gum at 8:20 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If I can get my gmail in elm... well I don't know what I'd do.
posted by jessamyn at 8:21 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

This is awesome. Somebody ought to put a web page front end on this thing.
posted by king walnut at 8:28 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I think this is just a front end to Google SMS.
posted by Lazlo at 8:56 PM on June 2, 2008

I honestly don't see the point in command-line access via HTML. Maybe if it was a VT100 terminal, or something...
posted by blue_beetle at 9:31 PM on June 2, 2008

"If I can get my gmail in elm... well I don't know what I'd do."

Elm Millennium Edition has POP and IMAP support. Or you could just use regular Elm and fetchmail, which is how people did POP in the olden days anyway.

"I honestly don't see the point in command-line access via HTML"

Yeah. I was hoping there'd be a source tarball of an actually useful utility, but instead it's just another nifty browser toy. That's a shame.

"w3m http://www.google.com/search?q=$1"

Hm. I'm getting an idea, but I hate writing SOAP code. Decisions, decisions.
posted by majick at 9:57 PM on June 2, 2008

Needs Commodore interface.

LOAD "BAR JOKES",8,1
posted by chips ahoy at 10:00 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

LOADING
READY.
LIST

0              GOOGLE/64
11 "AHAJOKES.COM    " PRG
7  "DREAMHAVEN.ORG  " PRG
42 "COMEDY-ZONE.NET " PRG
585 BLOCKS FREE.
READY.

posted by majick at 10:16 PM on June 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Anyone know what the commands for the different languages are?

t jp en 頭の滝オフしてほしい does not result in anything.
posted by Archers of Loaf at 11:01 PM on June 2, 2008

In the beginning was the command line.

Also a little later.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:03 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Hmm - but it doesn't give me the one thing GUIs and Web 2.0 never quite can: simple composition of simple tools.
posted by freebird at 12:03 AM on June 3, 2008

I am totally underwhelmed.
posted by SciencePunk at 1:46 AM on June 3, 2008

hmmmm.... I like CLI's, I use them daily, and I'm just not getting a thrill out of this. There's stuff a GUI, even a mostly textual GUI like Google's page, is just plain good at. If it included scripting functions, incorporated regular expressions, etc it might be more nifty, but basically its identical to using google's front page, except you only see four results at a time.
posted by sotonohito at 4:14 AM on June 3, 2008

I couldn't get Japanese translations to work either. The examples show you're using the syntax correctly, Archers, and stuff like t en de translate me to german works. Maybe jp isn't the right switch for Japanese or it isn't supported?
posted by no_moniker at 10:00 AM on June 3, 2008

Turns out the Japanese is ja not jp. Using that works.
posted by no_moniker at 10:06 AM on June 3, 2008

I'm experimenting with this as my start page for a while. Thanks.
posted by nthdegx at 2:51 PM on June 3, 2008

Well, I think it's awesome.
posted by odinsdream at 4:54 PM on June 3, 2008

Firefox users, get your darker versions here.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 10:18 PM on June 3, 2008

Suprisingly this is very handy!
posted by ilike at 7:45 AM on June 4, 2008