Calculation failure after triggering Google Captcha (no results for Google-based queries)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
type star 8 (*8) and press enter after that you won't be able to use the star 
symbol for multiplication

What is the expected output?
I expect to be able to multiply

What do you see instead?
An inability to use the star symbol to multiply

What version of Chrome are you using?
I installed it today so whatever version is posted on January 28,2011

What operating system are you using?
Windows 7

What country are you in?
USA

Please provide any additional information below.
I can use x to multiply, but not the star symbol.  I've tried uninstalling and 
reinstalling the program but to no avail!

Original issue reported on code.google.com by elfte...@gmail.com on 28 Jan 2011 at 6:06

[GoogleCodeExporter]

[deleted comment]

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for the report.

I've never been able to reproduce this problem, but a few other people have 
reported having this same issue. I have a few ideas how to minimize or work 
around it for the next release. 

In the meantime you might try clearing Chrome's cache and cookies. (Under the 
wrench menu, choose Tools > Clear Browsing Data...) NOTE: This will probably 
also clear your Chromey Calculator history.

Original comment by bwrobin...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2011 at 12:37

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I cleared the cache and cookies like you suggested, however that doesn't clear 
the Chromey Calculator history.  It also didn't help with my problem.  I tried 
clearing the Calculator's history by hitting Clear on the calculator itself, 
however that didn't solve the problem either.

Original comment by elfte...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2011 at 4:24

[GoogleCodeExporter]

When I send "*8" on google.com, I get this page:

http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://www.google.com/search%3Faq%3Df%26
sourceid%3Dchrome%26ie%3DUTF-8%26q%3D*8

After responding to that page by entering the distorted text in image, Chromey 
works normally again.

Original comment by iisi50...@gmail.com on 3 Feb 2011 at 10:23

[GoogleCodeExporter]

@iisi50mhz
Cool! So you're able to reproduce this? I've never been able to. Is it easy to 
get back into a state again where * stops working?

Original comment by bwrobin...@gmail.com on 4 Feb 2011 at 2:01

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think this is not unique to "*8" after all. It reproduced for me on the first 
two tries, but today it does not. It may just be that "*8" is one of the 
factors that Google's heuristics consider when Google is looking at recent 
submissions from the same IP to determine whether the Captcha should be 
displayed.

Possibly merge with the Captcha issue?

Original comment by iisi50...@gmail.com on 11 Feb 2011 at 2:56

[IIsi50MHz]

This seems to be a math symptom masking an underlying problem. Namely, that Google may at times interpret some requests as non-human interaction and as a result present a Captcha to our extension. The extension doesn't know how to handle this and fails to return a result.

The failure of the extension to return results from Google can be temporarily resorted by entering a calculation on Google.com and solving the Captcha. This depends on the user guessing that this is the underlying problem, because the extension provides no indication of the underlying problem.

With the advent of basic clientside calculation support within the extension itself, the number of requests it sends to Google has been drastically reduced. However, the underlying failure to handle Google's error condition remains. Also, many calculation errors have been caused by the integration of the clientside math parser.

Recommend the extension perform examination of Google's response to a query and attemt to find known error conditions within it. Further recommend preceeding to implementation or integration of a new parser to be known as the Mk II parser.

[IIsi50MHz]

Also affects currency conversions: #137 #166 #167 #169 #170