YakShaving

I was looking for a Firefox search engine plugin today for Google’s “I’m feeling lucky”. Why? Because I am militant about saving time, I search for stuff constantly, and I think it’s easier to type in “Illinois DMV” into a search bar and I’m pretty sure I know what the first hit is going to be on Google.

As I clicked the button and added the search engine to my Firefox, I realized what I was just doing. I have effectively just denied Google any opportunity what so ever to garner any revenue from me–Nay, not even an EYEBALL–I tend to avoid Google ads on most occasions unless there’s something specific I’m looking for and I’d prefer to buy from a “reputable dealer” that is willing to actually pay for google ads (weird how that works, isn’t it?)…. But now, without the ability to even prompt me for a chance to click on a sponsored link for… a driving school, or AAA (as the case was here).

Then it hit me. Not only is google providing me extremely valuable forwarding (Which I’m confident that it does for MANY many local businesses), but it’s closing itself to any sponsored ad revenue.

Why would they even have an I’m feeling lucky button? Googling (wow this is meta) a little more about this conundrum yielded this– I wasn’t the first to think about this problem apparently.

Shucks, now I almost felt guilty… until I read the comment by “joeduck” and woke up to real economic truth. Realistically, even if I didn’t use I’m feeling Lucky, there’s no way I’d be inclined to click on an ad if I knew exactly what I was looking for. It’s erroneous to assume that they’d garner any more revenue– perhaps a very tiny amount– by removing the I’m feeling lucky button.

I can sleep better at night now.

Respond to me on Twitter: @AshBhoopathy or follow the discussion on HN.