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Comment by peanut_worm | Hacker News Reader

Why does google do things like this

I'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.

Sweet Jesus, that is even more cynical than my own take, but you must be right..! Amazingly, this could very well be the reason imo...

All of the SEO farm timer websites in the SRP will be plastered with Google ads too.

This is the most beautifully dystopian nonchalant black mirror reality...

Alternatively they want to drive people towards their timer app to harvest more data.

I 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

Yup. 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.

BRB, going to make a youtube short for every math operation to replace calc.

And 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.

But 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?

Hahaha 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

I'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)

Video description:

“Chosen by fair dice roll. Guaranteed to be random.”

I can only come up with "they truly truly TRULY don't give a single flying fuck about their users"

They love their users, but only those who watch or click on ads.

you are the product, not the user. The real user is buying add space.

Imagine thinking you're their user. Google's users are advertisers. You are merely the product being sold.

some 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"

Tbh I wouldn't be mad if Google went back to being only a search engine, an email client, and a web browser.

I 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.

FWIW, 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.

Can also do them on iOS by swiping down the home screen

Consider using the "units" program. It's excellent and can handle almost any conversion and unit-full math expression.

KDE will do it in Krunner. All units and currency

Krunner 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.

GNOME supports unit conversion too, by pressing Super and typing in the queries. And iOS too. Not sure about Android though, because IIRC the search bar just directs you to Google search.

Just be careful with unit conversions and cooking/baking measurements. They are often wildly wrong. Search for "1 cup flour in grams" and you'll find suggested answers ranging from 100g to 300g -- while it _does_ vary by brand and type of flour, it certainly doesn't vary that much!

I've seen variations in published cookbooks too! Maybe not this much, but easily in the 150-250 range. It's a real problem, not just a Google one.

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