Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#21

Post by comboy »

SilverRed wrote: post #13
Apocryphon wrote: post #9

It's got a real Geocities marquee vibe to it, as all Easter eggs should.

I wonder how much maintenance and testing these things add. Sure it would be trivial to get it working now, but they must have to do so many checks to see its not breaking on other browsers and then that it doesn't cause issues in the future.

Haha, are you kidding me? Using firefox try cilcking pause button in bottom left on youtube, then hitting space to play it (event is handled twice, video will only play fraction of second). It's been like that for .. 5 years +? With google photos / gmail / hangouts it's like Google is trying to actively discourage you from using anything other than Chrome by giving you just enough bugs to make you really annoyed but avoid being labeled as completely broken.

They should have it all working flawlessly at their scale, given amount of data they can collect and amount of communication they are providing about the issues.

I'm stopping before going further because I don't want to do the standard google keyword present let's do some bitching, but I wish Google put could 1/5 of the effort they are putting into making their core infrastructure rock solid on user experience in their products. Despite providing ff as an example it's not like having no issues when you run everything Google.

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#22

Post by warent »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #12

Whatever our criticisms of Google, it's part of our internet culture in sometimes weird and wonderful ways. This seems kind of like a little happy dance for the world after so much hand wringing and legitimate worry.

I'll be the cynical one this time and say that I'd rather carefully calculated PR stunts didnt have an affect of making corporations seem more fun and human. Sociopaths wear all kinds of convincing masks

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#23

Post by JimBlackwood »

warent wrote: post #22
DoreenMichele wrote: post #12

Whatever our criticisms of Google, it's part of our internet culture in sometimes weird and wonderful ways. This seems kind of like a little happy dance for the world after so much hand wringing and legitimate worry.

I'll be the cynical one this time and say that I'd rather carefully calculated PR stunts didnt have an affect of making corporations seem more fun and human. Sociopaths wear all kinds of convincing masks

Whatever cynicism, it doesn’t take away that this is just a fun thing to do.

I wonder if maybe Google employs humans that like things that are fun?

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#24

Post by Shorel »

warent wrote: post #22
DoreenMichele wrote: post #12

Whatever our criticisms of Google, it's part of our internet culture in sometimes weird and wonderful ways. This seems kind of like a little happy dance for the world after so much hand wringing and legitimate worry.

I'll be the cynical one this time and say that I'd rather carefully calculated PR stunts didnt have an affect of making corporations seem more fun and human. Sociopaths wear all kinds of convincing masks

It is both things of course, to different people.

It is something fun to do for the coders who implemented the animated ships, and most of the people who see them.

Likewise, it is a calculated PR stunt by the executives who approved the release.

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#26

Post by tyingq »

SilverRed wrote: post #13
Apocryphon wrote: post #9

It's got a real Geocities marquee vibe to it, as all Easter eggs should.

I wonder how much maintenance and testing these things add. Sure it would be trivial to get it working now, but they must have to do so many checks to see its not breaking on other browsers and then that it doesn't cause issues in the future.

In this case, it's a div full of ship emojis separated by   and a css animation, so no javascript.

You can change the speed in the js console...

$('div.resultMarquee').style.animationDuration='120s';

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#27

Post by ithkuil »

Shorel wrote: post #24
warent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be the cynical one this time and say that I'd rather carefully calculated PR stunts didnt have an affect of making corporations seem more fun and human. Sociopaths wear all kinds of convincing masks

It is both things of course, to different people. It is something fun to do for the coders who implemented the animated ships, and most of the people who see them. Likewise, it is a calculated PR stunt by the executives who approved the release.

Or even better: a calculated decision to create a culture where people who are not executives can approve a release that ultimately functions as a PR stunt, without requiring everyone involved to necessarily see it that way. It scales much better

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#28

Post by DoreenMichele »

ithkuil wrote: post #27
Shorel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is both things of course, to different people. It is something fun to do for the coders who implemented the animated ships, and most of the people who see them. Likewise, it is a calculated PR stunt by the executives who approved the release.

Or even better: a calculated decision to create a culture where people who are not executives can approve a release that ultimately functions as a PR stunt, without requiring everyone involved to necessarily see it that way. It scales much better

Every last one of us is a potential bad actor. This is why the enlightened self interest metric was such a big deal to introduce and why we have myriad traditions for trying to curb our tendencies, such as the Christian idea of "Lead me not into temptation."

Finding systems to plug individuals into that have some hope of doing good for both them and others is our only hope of making a world with nearly 8 billion people function at all sanely.

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#29

Post by 2bitencryption »

jsjabsvsjs wrote: post #19

> Easter eggs can be a way for software engineers and designers to put a bit of their own personality into the product through humor and wit. They're a way of saying, 'I made this and I love it.' Their hidden nature means that those who discover them are likely to be people who spend a lot of time using the product. > This act of discovery is great for building an emotional connection between the people who create so…

but let me ask, in this day and age, on google.com, the most visited website on the planet and the most venerable of all Google's properties (it is the face of their trillion(?) dollar company)...

...do we really think this was a fun little easter egg from a software engineer having some fun over lunch?

I imagine that could have been the case in the mid 2000's.

But the front page of google? surely there were meetings over this, multiple reviews, lawyers, etc? Or am I just too cynical?

Re: Google showing animated ships when searching “ever given”

#30

Post by Craighead »

2bitencryption wrote: post #29
jsjabsvsjs wrote: post #19

> Easter eggs can be a way for software engineers and designers to put a bit of their own personality into the product through humor and wit. They're a way of saying, 'I made this and I love it.' Their hidden nature means that those who discover them are likely to be people who spend a lot of time using the product. > This act of discovery is great for building an emotional connection between the people who create so…

but let me ask, in this day and age, on google.com, the most visited website on the planet and the most venerable of all Google's properties (it is the face of their trillion(?) dollar company)... ...do we really think this was a fun little easter egg from a software engineer having some fun over lunch? I imagine that could have been the case in the mid 2000's. But the front page of google? surely there were meetings…

Too cynical
Post reply on HN