

Is 39 the New 28 at Google? - jaydub
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/is-39-the-new-28-at-google/

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westside1506
Man, I was hoping the article would be about 39-year-olds being better than
28-year-olds at something. :)

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mattmaroon
Wow, was that boring and uninformative.

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markbao
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."

When I read this, the only thing on my mind was:

 _Why do people freaking care?_

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jaydub
_Why do people freaking care?_

How many websites get NY Times coverage for adding 11 words to their homepage?

People care because of the significant weight this ostensibly small change
carries.

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vlad
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.

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jeroen
The story was in the privacy-link announcement.
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-comes-next-in-
th...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-comes-next-in-this-
series-13-33-53.html)

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vlad
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.

