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Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

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Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#71

Post by zeruch »

clpm4j wrote: post #69
bushbaba wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces, aquisition. DoubleClick, aquisition. Waze, aquisition. Feels like it has been roughly a decade since Google changed the world.

Cloud infrastructure, the Go programming language, Kubernetes. Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here, but it certainly hasn't just been advertising and acquisitions.

"Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here"

Indeed.

Cloud Infrastructure = playing catch up to a player that set the stage (and still leads), Go I don't think "changes the world" quite as much as consolidates and improves things that already were available in everything from C to Python, but suited to a specific set of use cases that Google particularly cared about for their own business first and the "world" later. K8s came out in roughly the same window as other orchestration tech (e.g. Mesos) but had/s the benefit of the 'Google' name attached to it. It simplifies some things certainly, but is it really a "world changer"?

TBH, more seems to be about changing Googles world more than the broader one, but that goes to your original quote.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#72

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

robbedpeter wrote: post #55
nhoughto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if they removed it there would definitely be commentary about how theyve changed. Plus there must be a whole team that managed that functionality, what would they do then? Help fix the search results maybe..

I've recently begun thinking that Google can't, in fact, improve their search results. They've forced the algorithmic landscape of available data onto a local optima because of seo and financial incentives. The only way they could improve results would be the cooperation of all players - website owners would have to agree to not try to game the algorithm, which will never happen. Everything is so oriented around gami…

Let me very slightly push back: Google can't improve their search results without changing how they approach the problem. Now, it's Google, so the odds of them changing their approach is basically zero. But, it's my belief that for instance, a review team of 50 employees whose only job is to look at common searches and the results and hunt down ... let's call it low quality links... and manually blacklist them and pass aggregated results along to the machine learning teams that run the normal algorithm, could absolutely improve their quality. But, it's Google, and manual intervention is impossible (in their world view), so yes, in reality it will never be fixed.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#73

Post by bhawks »

bushbaba wrote: post #61
bhawks wrote: post #54

The only substance I can extract from this article is that the author really dislikes Google. If there is any other signal it's buried in the noise of the preachy and verbose writing style. At least the links to $90 books don't include an affiliate tracker :). Google is a company that has built things which have changed the world (whether this tends to the good / bad / neutral will take a much longer time to sus out…

Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces, aquisition. DoubleClick, aquisition. Waze, aquisition. Feels like it has been roughly a decade since Google changed the world.

A sibling poster points out there is quite a bit of original work but can we discuss acquisitions?

Most acquisitions are kind of gigantic re-orgs: they cost a ton and rarely leave things better than when they started - oh and generally execs will always feel they were successful :)

Most of the examples you listed are the dream acquisition with exponential improvement. I have a hard time seeing Android on 2 billion devices or YouTube with millions of creators delivering HD content across the world without standing hand-in-hand with the rest of the teams at Google. Similarly Google would not be able to do it either (Google video would have been sunset without YouTube acquisition and no one was building a consumer electronics focused os).

Google certainly has screwed the pooch on many acquisitions but to chalk up all those other successes as a given or as pure luck is a naive statement. There was a ton of hard work, huge chance of failure and really impactful results.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#74

Post by sterlind »

bushbaba wrote: post #61
bhawks wrote: post #54

The only substance I can extract from this article is that the author really dislikes Google. If there is any other signal it's buried in the noise of the preachy and verbose writing style. At least the links to $90 books don't include an affiliate tracker :). Google is a company that has built things which have changed the world (whether this tends to the good / bad / neutral will take a much longer time to sus out…

Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces, aquisition. DoubleClick, aquisition. Waze, aquisition. Feels like it has been roughly a decade since Google changed the world.

I'm reminded of the "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Life of Brian: https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc

I'm not sure the history with workspaces, but Google Docs etc. were very important. Google also gets points in my book just by scaling YouTube, Maps, Gmail etc. To the degree they've published their work it's been revolutionary to the field.

Excellent engineering with terrible/conservative corporate strategy, imo.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#75

Post by xnx »

The idea of going to a web page to get an answer to a query is becoming increasingly dated, which makes the I'm Feeling Lucky button even less relevant. Why should I have to read through a whole page to find the bit I'm looking for when the system can pull out / synthesize the exact answer?

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#76

Post by klyrs »

simpsond wrote: post #35
jackconsidine wrote: post #31

> In 2007, Marissa Mayer, then a Google exec, shared that only one percent of Google searches went through the button; internal analysis further estimated that “I’m Feeling Lucky” cost the company more than $100 million in revenue per year because it skipped over ad-filled search pages These numbers don't add up....

If revenue attributable to ads was over 10 billion at the time of writing, then it adds up. Edit: 3.66 billion in 2007, so yeah, doesn’t add up.

Being generous, one would take into account the folks who click to the second, third, etc page of results. But I highly doubt there's a fat enough tail there to amount to much.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#77

Post by sterlind »

zeruch wrote: post #71
clpm4j wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud infrastructure, the Go programming language, Kubernetes. Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here, but it certainly hasn't just been advertising and acquisitions.

"Now of course your definition of "change the world" comes into play here" Indeed. Cloud Infrastructure = playing catch up to a player that set the stage (and still leads), Go I don't think "changes the world" quite as much as consolidates and improves things that already were available in everything from C to Python, but suited to a specific set of use cases that Google particularly cared about for their own busines…

iirc Mesos was inspired by Borg. Google kept Borg secret for quite a long time, eventually releasing K8s when they started failing hard at cloud and needed to keep their foot in the door for developer mind-share.

Borg's real win was the insane colocation and oversubscription it enabled, both of which K8s and all major public clouds have failed to replicate because you can't securely share bare metal between customers.

and K8s ended up being too little too late, despite beating Mesos and being quite successful, because VMs had won by that point.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#78

Post by exodust »

bhawks wrote: post #54

The only substance I can extract from this article is that the author really dislikes Google. If there is any other signal it's buried in the noise of the preachy and verbose writing style. At least the links to $90 books don't include an affiliate tracker :). Google is a company that has built things which have changed the world (whether this tends to the good / bad / neutral will take a much longer time to sus out…

So when you didn't find any substance in the article, you filled the void with "Google changed the world"?

I wouldn't miss I'm Feeling Lucky if they bin it. What I do miss is the option to show "forum results only". Google removed the option a few years ago. They don't want people going to forums, presumably they can't follow and scrutinize your activity. How dare you login to a service untrackable by the company that changed the world!

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#79

Post by ThinBold »

coding123 wrote: post #64
muzani wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doodles are personality too

Except that they used to be there because it was fun. Now they are doing it to keep up with expectations.

There were days where seeing a unique doodle makes your day. And then one day you realized that there is an official page for all doodles and you spend a good time on it. Now it is just PR department yelling: we didn't forget it's international trans-women day etc.

Re: Why does Google still have the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?

#80

Post by bushbaba »

bhawks wrote: post #73
bushbaba wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google DID build things which changed the world. Now of days what have they built that changed the world? Youtube, aquisition. Android, aquisition. Workspaces, aquisition. DoubleClick, aquisition. Waze, aquisition. Feels like it has been roughly a decade since Google changed the world.

A sibling poster points out there is quite a bit of original work but can we discuss acquisitions? Most acquisitions are kind of gigantic re-orgs: they cost a ton and rarely leave things better than when they started - oh and generally execs will always feel they were successful :) Most of the examples you listed are the dream acquisition with exponential improvement. I have a hard time seeing Android on 2 billion de…

Sure and the last one was over a decade ago. Youtube acquired in 2006 Android acquired in 2005 Docs acquired in 2012.
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