are you feeling lucky punk?

I am one of nature’s unlucky creatures. Well, I would be if I believed in luck per se. I know I am one of the unlucky ones because I am one of the 62% of the population who don’t get what they want when they hit the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button in google. In fact often I’m one of the 11% of people who don’t even get what they’re looking for in the second listing. Generally speaking I eventually give up around page three of the listings and make the statistics up instead.

Chances are you, as an internet user, are familiar with the minimalist interface that greets you when you type in google.com or co.uk or .hk or whatever your suffix of choice is. It is the ubiquitous search engine of the masses. Techies and geeks of various hues pass over it on to the lesser-known engines and indexes; but this is more snobbery than anything else – google does what it’s supposed to and, in most cases, it does it well. Back when google was launched the likes of Yahoo and AltaVista ruled the roost. Late generation Xs like myself remember those days well; no myspace or bebo or friends reunited; hotmail was an independent email client offering enough space to save three emails; advertising was limited and most content was truly free. Search engines tended to do more than search – they offered webspace, news portals and mousemats; they were good but often fell prey to spammers and irrelevant selections – they never gave you what you were looking for without putting up a fight first. Google usually took you past all the rubbish and delivered you where you wanted to be with the minium of fuss.

And of course we have that button. ‘I’m feeling lucky.’ Except I never do. In all likelihood, if you were to type in something, say for instance ‘common misquoted lines,’ and hit that sinister little button it would take you straight to a page devoted to Bogie and Eastwoodisms. You could play it again like a lucky punk and time again it would give you something useful. Me? If I hit that button it’ll take me to a page of amateur dramatists angling horror stories. That button is possessed. And, worse still, it doesn’t like me.