This is what happens when you go to the homepage of Gemini and start typing quickly:

Mechanically, I think this is React or some other framework setting focus again with some delay, but the end result is… rather disturbing.

While the technical solution would be to fix the problem or at least do not set focus again if already set, I wonder what’s the real challenge here. I imagine it might be that the testing process (if any) assumes using the mouse or trackpad first. In this case, moving the hand to the keyboard to start typing gives the interaction just enough delay to miss the second, unnecessary focus.

I think a good assumption to have for all common interactions is that for some users, fingers are already on the keyboard and things can happen so much more faster than you expect.

Not accounting for that, the creators of this flow inadvertently broke one of the cardinal rules. We talked about it in the context of mouse pointers before, but it applies as well to text: don’t move my cursor for me.