

document.f.q.focus(); The Billion Dollar Line of JavaScript - jkush
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/billion-dollar-javascript/

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vlad
The author confuses correlation and causation. Google has been setting the
cursor to the textfield since they were in beta and long before AdWords. I've
done the same.

It's funny the author neglected to consider that Google could have eliminated
the I'm Feeling Lucky Button (try it) if they really wanted to give users a
chance to make the "mistake."

Actually, it's just a side-effect of making life easy for users.

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jkush
I totally agree with you vlad. I've always attributed the cursor focus as
being just good user interaction and not some ploy for more ad clicks.

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vlad
Yeah! However, it is one of those great moments where one goes out of their
way to make life simple for their customers, and then notices a pattern they
couldn't have possibly deduced had they not implemented their idea.

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Alex3917
There are actually a number of legitimate reasons for typing URLs into Google
instead of the address bar. For example, public computers in foreign countries
are often configured to redirect .com requests to the national TLD. So it's
much faster to type amazon.com into Google than it is to figure out how to
make Amazon.com stop resolving to Amazon.cn or whatever.

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rwebb
"At an average cost of $5 per click this adds up to maybe $500 per day in
revenue for Google just for this one search. Multiply across 365 days and
taking a very conservative guess that this happens across 10,000 different
domains gives over $1.8 billion in yearly revenue for Google."

clearly!

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henning
Google's revenues are largely dependent on the behaviors of inexperienced
users, especially ones who can't tell the difference between text ads and
actual content? No way!

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rms
When I want to immediately engage in a financial transaction, I always click
on the Google ads because I know there I will find someone selling me
something rather than useful pure information

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henning
Google's results for things often result in places to buy that thing rather
than information about it, so I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.

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rms
I was being serious, sometimes I do find the Google ads useful. I probably
should have phrased it in a way that sounded less sarcastic. :)

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myoung8
Genius.

