Marissa Mayer, Google Star

Google Facts….a talk withMarissa Mayer, Product Manager for Google, from a standing-room only session last week at PARC in Palo Alto.

“The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.

Marissa Mayer of Google. 

Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic.

The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’

Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public.”