Alan Williamson writes about an evening with Googles Marissa Mayer. Lots of interesting trivia there. A couple

• The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface.


• Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked 'Whats up?' to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

Lots more at Alan's blog, check out the whole list.