That's rather cynical. The project was actually just implemented by a couple of employees who are Starcraft fans, not a mandate from management. The reality is Google actually really is a "fun" place to be.
Hence my original point that it was probably done on 20% time (not mandated by management). I disagree that I am being cynical for pointing out the self-evident facts that:
1. Google spends a lot of quality dev hours programming "fun" easter eggs/doodles/April fools sections into their products.
2. These efforts gain a lot of positive spin in the media.
3. This positive spin helps to improve the image of the corporation as a fun place to work/do business with etc.
Now given how many hours that go into some of these efforts, I find it difficult to believe that at least some of them must be mandated by management, but to me that's irrelevant: I'd much rather see all of this dev time being spent on:
Humans are not robots. Squishy human elements like motivation, attitude, camaraderie, and "fun" have material productivity consequences, especially in cognition-driven fields like software.
"Quality dev hours" are not a fungible resource. In fact, they're so un-fungible that we commonly accept that beyond a certain point the value of a dev hour is negative. Maybe time spent on these projects invigorates engineers to do better work in the rest of their work hours? Maybe not. But the issue is more subtle than you're giving it credit for.
Plus... well... THIS particular simple throwaway Easter egg is what bothers you? You know there are several multi-billion-dollar industries that employ smart people in creating "fun" ways for people to unproductively spend their time, right?
> Plus... well... THIS particular simple throwaway Easter egg is what bothers you? You know there are several multi-billion-dollar industries that employ smart people in creating "fun" ways for people to unproductively spend their time, right?
Yes, and they are called games companies, and I love their products and they really are fun. Is Google a games/entertainment company, or a company that sells advertising?
And no, it is not this particular Google Easter egg that bothers me, all of them do. I made that clear in my last comment. The fact that almost every one of them ends up on a thread on HN like this one is distracting (for the record this is the first one I have commented negatively on, but they're all as bad).
