A Weird Bug In Google Chrome For Desktop Randomly Loads Mobile Search Results Page

Last week, Google announced the promotion of Chrome 85 to the stable channel of Linux, Mac, and Windows, and the new update includes twenty security fixes. Google paid out more than $10,000 in bounties to those security researchers who reported some of those twenty security fixes addressed in Chrome 85. Furthermore, two of those vulnerabilities were marked ‘High’ which is the second-most-serious threat level of Google. According to the company, one of those bugs was in the iOS version of Google Chrome, and a member of Microsoft’s browser vulnerability search team reported the bug to Google.

In the past few days, many people reported experiencing a weird bug on Google.com. According to a report published by 9to5Google, a vulnerability with https://google.com or Chrome sees queries entered via the address bar of the Chrome browser return the smartphone variant of Google Search results page. On Tuesday, some users who are experiencing this bug reported that instead of getting the desktop version, they were getting the smartphone variant of Google Search. Basically, it is the Search results page users get when they browse on a smartphone or tablet, however, displayed on a much larger canvas.

Furthermore, there is no side panel available to display the Knowledge Panel results since everything is in the center. On the other hand, some people are reported seeing an odd, thin variant of the Google logo on top of the Google Search results page.

According to 9to5Google, this bug impacts the Chrome desktop browser as well as Chrome OS, and users of Chrome 85, as well as Chrome Beta/ Development version 86, are facing this issue. Furthermore, it also persists even when the user is using Incognito mode. It is important to note that not every query returns the mobile variant of the Google Search results page for some users, and most of the time, a simple refresh can bring back the desktop site. It seems that this is a first-party issue and not impacted by extensions.

9to5Google also reported that in their testing, sending an affected smartphone URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to an uninfected user correctly loads the desktop variant of the Google Search results page. Although many people have reported about this mobile Search bug, it seems that this is not currently a widespread issue. Google updates the Chrome browser nearly every six weeks.


Image: Reddit / CrazyHoodlem

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