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The 110 Million Dollar Button

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-a-big-twinkie dept.

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.'"

3 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. It's a subliminal suggestion by Thanshin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Every time you open the page Google tell you, you're feeling lucky.

    They'd add a button for "I'm feeling smart" or "I'm feeling sexy" if they found a way of justifying such a button's presence.

  2. AJAX by nmg196 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always thought they should add some AJAX so that you know where this button will take you before you actually click it.

    eg if you type in "oxford" the button should change to say "Take me to www.ox.ac.uk"

  3. Re:Small change by wilx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I do. There are certain searches, like search for PuTTY, for which I know it definitely does find what I want.