Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Has anyone here ever used the "I'm feeling lucky" button. I think I did once in 1999. Usually it's the second or third result that's the most relevant.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
They know that the first result is pretty unlikely to be what you want, so you'll have to come back and do a real search anyway...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
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!
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.
Nah, it doesn't cost them anything like that. That's probably what it would cost if every one of those "feeling lucky" people had instead clicked on an ad, but let's be honest here, that would never have happened.
Those people who use it are
(a) people who already know that the result they want is the first one and wouldn't click anything else anyway.
(b) people doing silly google-hacks, like "miserable failure", or whatever.
(c) people who will come back any use google's regular search anyway for more results once they've seen the "lucky" one.
For all these people, using the "feeling lucky" button isn't stopping them clicking on any ads, because they wouldn't click them anyway. In fact, it is actually likely to be adding to their brand awareness of google, and thus making them more likely to come back to google for other searches where they might click on ads.
So yes, it might lose them a *few* ad clicks on the *actual* search involved, but long term, those people will be back and will click on other ads. Google isn't losing anything from this.
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"
And my capcha was confide, spooky...
The phrase "I'm feeling lucky" is part of the Google brand, as has been since their search engine was incepted.
Notice the phrase is also prominent (and useful!) in Picasa.
The point is, losing it would be a big change to the brand, like making Coke cans with no red on them.
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.
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!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed