Google: "Because these promotions [for special times] appear on our homepage for only a few days at a time, we don’t consider them in our official homepage word count."
Here's some background history, but I don't recall the source.
Google used to receive anonymous e-mails containing nothing but a number. Eventually, they figured out what this hint meant. Google made a sparse homepage a part of their identity.
Thanks! Nice find! I actually recalled this from reading about Google in some article four or five years ago, but it's nice to have a link to the information straight from the horse's mouth.
