5 ms·
Why does google do things like this
by peanut_worm 4y ago
Why does google do things like this
- isoprophlex 4y agoI can only come up with "they truly truly TRULY don't give a single flying fuck about their users"
- cafeinux 4y agoThey love their users, but only those who watch or click on ads.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoyou are the product, not the user. The real user is buying add space.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoImagine thinking you're their user. Google's users are advertisers. You are merely the product being sold.
- teraflop 4y agoI'm sure they did a careful, sophisticated A/B test and discovered that the timer was measurably decreasing revenue. After all, if you're clicking a timer widget, that means you're not clicking a Youtube video titled "6 minute countdown" and watching a 30-second ad first.
- isoprophlex 4y agoSweet Jesus, that is even more cynical than my own take, but you must be right..! Amazingly, this could very well be the reason imo...
- walthamstow 4y agoAll of the SEO farm timer websites in the SRP will be plastered with Google ads too.
- samstave 4y agoThis is the most beautifully dystopian nonchalant black mirror reality...
- _Algernon_ 4y agoAlternatively they want to drive people towards their timer app to harvest more data.
- lovingCranberry 4y agoI lol'd pretty hard at this comment. Then I went on to actually google "6 minute countdown" to check the view counters of the youtube videos (which are right at the top of the search results). My jaw dropped. 2,505,001 views 95,726 views 66,394 views 44,479 views
- teraflop 4y agoYup. I didn't say that just to get in a dig at Google; I said it because after glancing at the search results, and having worked at a similarly "data-driven" company for a long time, it seems like the most likely and obvious explanation.
- grupthink 4y agoBRB, going to make a youtube short for every math operation to replace calc.
- babyshake 4y agoAnd nobody is chiming in that Google being the best place to get instant answers without watching a 30-second ad is a very important part of their strategy that they should be careful about squandering to squeeze out a bit more ad revenue? At least make a dozen of these embedded tools a free perk for Google One subscribers if you need to make it all about money.
- Victerius 4y agoTbh I wouldn't be mad if Google went back to being only a search engine, an email client, and a web browser.
- rizky05 4y ago
- perlgeek 4y agoI quite like it that some simple unit conversions (Celsius <-> Farenheit is the one I use most often), rough currency conversions and the likes are displayed right on the search results page.
- falcolas 4y agoFWIW, some of these can be done in your OS search bar. Cmd Space on the Mac, and Win key on the pc. Not sure about the various flavors of Linux though.
- airstrike 4y agoCan also do them on iOS by swiping down the home screen
- progman32 4y agoConsider using the "units" program. It's excellent and can handle almost any conversion and unit-full math expression.
- gen3 4y agoKDE will do it in Krunner. All units and currency
- PAPPPmAc 4y agoKrunner is super finicky about it though, especially since it won't handle even the simplest of mixed units (eg. neither 6ft 2in or 6'2" works, where 6ft, 6', 2", and 2in all give conversions on their own). ...and then after it fails, if you hit enter or click at the top of the results like you would to copy the value, it launches whatever random program burbled to the top when it gave up.
- krisoft 4y agoBut okay, for whatever reason they did it. Why is the dice roller still there? It is already questionable why a search engine needs these features, but why remove one and not the other?
- isoprophlex 4y agoHahaha glorious, the dice roller is still there! That MUST mean that Teraflop is right: removing the timer drives people to "x minute timer" youtube video's
- hedora 4y agoI'm sure they did a careful, sophisticated A/B test and discovered that the dice roller was measurably decreasing revenue. After all, if you're clicking a widget, that means you're not clicking a Youtube video titled "roll dice" and watching a 30-second ad first. (With apologies to teraflop)
- pushrax 4y agoVideo description: “Chosen by fair dice roll. Guaranteed to be random.”
- ushakov 4y agosome Product Manager at Google will now get promoted for "removing legacy infrastructure, cutting costs and increasing ad revenue by directing traffic for popular search queries to partner sites"