Shunned by StumbleUpon, Google Builds Its Own Random Search

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 by Andy Beal

Shunned by StumbleUpon, Google Builds Its Own Random Search

If indeed Google did lose out on buying StumbleUpon to eBay, they’re moving quickly to prove they can simply build it themselves.

They’ve just announced their own random search button to the Google Toolbar. Adding the “pair of dice” to your Google Toolbar will allow you to randomly surf web sites that match your interests, based on your Google search history (you have to enable Google search history).

OK, so it doesn’t have the same social networking aspects that StumbleUpon has, but it certainly has a larger index of sites to pull from.

In StumbleUpon’s favor is that the new feature is very limited and you have to enable it, to use it. That said, like anything that Google rolls out, if it becomes popular, look for it to be added to the default experience.

If you don’t like the whole toolbar random deal, Google’s also introduced something similar as a tab on Google Personalized homepage.

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4 comments on “Shunned by StumbleUpon, Google Builds Its Own Random Search”

Jason Schramm Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 12:37 am

This thought definitely crossed my mind. With the dice logo are they saying it’s a gamble? heh.
Dario Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 7:50 am

I don’t see how eBay buying StumbleUpon is a problem for Google. Why don’t they just buy eBay so they can get Stumble in the same package? Make sense?
lyndonmaxewell Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 9:56 am

Was google outbid? My guess is that they didnt have enough dough as they were concentrating on the bid of doubleclick against Microsoft.
eBay & StumbleUpon - What About MySpace? Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

[...] Part of the big buzz is of course that Google lost out and is starting their own version instead. [...]

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