theverge[.]com/2022/8/19/23313010/google-timer-stopwatch-search-back
I'm feeling terribly ignorant not knowing this existed in the 1st place... I mean, I'm no master of Google-fu, but I'm hardly a novice either.
To use the timer, just type “set a timer for [however long you need],” and the top result will be a timer that automatically starts to count down. If you want to edit the timer, click on the numbers counting down. To use the stopwatch, Google “stopwatch” and click the “start” button on the box that appears. You can also tab back and forth between the timer and the stopwatch if one of them already appears in your search results.