For this week’s submission, I focused on how, whenever you do a google search, google tells you about how many results there are for it, and how long it took to get them. It’s in small text, so it’s clearly not meant to be a key feature of the page–but if that’s the case, why did google include it? Isn’t their whole deal about simplicity, and clean, appealing interfaces, etc? The vast majority of people doing a google search aren’t going to look past the first page, so they won’t particularly care how many billions of results there. In terms of the timestamp, most people only care about their internet speed when they think it’s too slow, and even then, they’re more likely to complain or check their connection than consult google to learn exactly how many hundredths of a second too long it took.
Majority of users aside, I know there are plenty of people who do use this information; chances are, these people are going to know more about the interface they’re engaging with than a casual user would. But if they’re already knowledgeable about this search engine, then why wouldn’t google stash that information away somewhere, and hide it where only people who already knew about it were likely to look?
I’m probably overthinking this.