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The 110 Million Dollar Button
Reservoir Hill writes "The 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button on Google's search page may cost the company up to $110 million in lost ad revenue every year according to a report on American Public Media's Marketplace. Tom Chavez says that since the company makes money selling ads on its search results page, the 1% of users who use the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button never see Google's ads - the button automatically directs them to their first search result. So why does Google keep the button? Marisa Mayer, Google's vice president responsible for everything on the search page, says that 'it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money' and the 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' button reminds you that 'people here have personality.' Web usability expert Jacob Nielsen says the whimsy serves another business purpose: 'Oh we're just two kind of grad students hanging out and having a beer and having a grand old time,' not you know, 'We are 16,000 people working on undermining your privacy.'"
Google has a database of "I'm feeling lucky" users for special purposes.
I bet their logo is too rainbow colored too, must offend homophobes into using a more straight looking site like yahoo. I bet they're losing at least $40 million as a result.
MABASPLOOM!
And my capcha was confide, spooky...
Well, sometimes you just feel lucky. It's fine to have a button to share it with google. Everytime I feel lucky, I go to google and press the button, I'm not searching for anything, I'm just feeling lucky.
Luckily, they don't have the "I'm feeling bored to death", otherwise i would spend too much time there.
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
How can you forget the french military victories in "I'm Feeling Lucky" ?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It's not really a huge gamble that the first result will be relevant. "I feel a vague sense of mild positivity" is probably more appropriate.
In order to generate a real, winner-takes-all atmosphere of living on the edge, an element of risk should be introduced. For instance, a 60% chance of going to the first search result, a 30% chance of going to tubgirl, a 9% chance of having your identity stolen and a 1% chance of having bomb-making instructions downloaded to your machine and a tip-off email sent to the relevant authorities.
I never got lucky by pushing a button. Unless "pushing a button" is used metaphorically to include phrases such as "I love you," "you are so beautiful," "just one more drink" etc.
Hold on a minute. So is he saying that they put the "I'm feeling lucky" feature in just so we don't notice that google is really "16,000 people working on undermining your privacy?" So they make us think they are "just two kind of grad students hanging out and having a beer and having a grand old time" so we don't notice that the true purpose of google is to undermine our privacy?
Time to put on the tin foil hat -- I am on to you now google! You just made my list!
Next they'll replace it with "I'm feeling gullible" and make sure it only ever links through to a page that already contains Google ads ;o)
Wouldn't that invalidate the "lucky" part of "I'm feeling lucky"? How is it "feeling lucky" if you know where you're going?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Wait, there's a back button on slot machines? Damn it, I've lost so much money needlessly.
Which part of "I'm feeling lucky" was it that you didn't understand?
My personal favorite was when I searched for "French Military Victories" using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button...
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.