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Comment by teraflop | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure they did a careful, sophisticated A/B test and discovered that the timer was measurably decreasing revenue. After all, if you're clicking a timer widget, that means you're not clicking a Youtube video titled "6 minute countdown" and watching a 30-second ad first.

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Sweet Jesus, that is even more cynical than my own take, but you must be right..! Amazingly, this could very well be the reason imo...

All of the SEO farm timer websites in the SRP will be plastered with Google ads too.

I lol'd pretty hard at this comment.

Then I went on to actually google "6 minute countdown" to check the view counters of the youtube videos (which are right at the top of the search results).

My jaw dropped.

2,505,001 views

95,726 views

66,394 views

44,479 views

Yup. I didn't say that just to get in a dig at Google; I said it because after glancing at the search results, and having worked at a similarly "data-driven" company for a long time, it seems like the most likely and obvious explanation.

This is the most beautifully dystopian nonchalant black mirror reality...

And nobody is chiming in that Google being the best place to get instant answers without watching a 30-second ad is a very important part of their strategy that they should be careful about squandering to squeeze out a bit more ad revenue? At least make a dozen of these embedded tools a free perk for Google One subscribers if you need to make it all about money.

Alternatively they want to drive people towards their timer app to harvest more data.

BRB, going to make a youtube short for every math operation to replace calc.

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