Did you mean recursion?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion

by _pius • 17 years ago

290 49 17 years ago

google.com

donaq• 17 years ago

Nice easter egg.

J_McQuade2• 17 years ago

How long before someone moans about it not performing tail call optimisation, do you reckon?

apgwoz• 17 years ago

Ugh.. it doesn't do tail call optimization? What is this, Python? Scheme has had this for years and is actually required to conform to the spec! Get with it Google!

DannoHung• 17 years ago

What do you mean? Do you see a dozen stack frames? It's not embedded in 10 iFrames, is it?

ewjordan2• 17 years ago

Call me crazy, but I just can't help but keep clicking that damn link, hoping to find the real Easter egg when I "blow the stack"...

Only hit the first few magic numbers so far, but I'm kinda nervous about bombing Google with too many requests in a short period of time, I doubt they look kindly on that...ah well, better things to do with my time anyhow.

katamole3• 17 years ago

They might throw you the odd CAPTCHA but apart from that I doubt they'd do anything.

Periodic• 17 years ago

I don't think you can blow the stack. They do Tail Recursion Optimization, meaning they don't maintain a stack of previous web pages since the information isn't required anymore.

dugmartin• 17 years ago

If they would have iframed 10 search result pages embedded within themselves it would have even been cooler.

joezydeco2• 17 years ago

Yeah, it would have made more sense. All I see here is an infinite loop.

Retric• 17 years ago

Look at the URL it changes after every click.

eru• 17 years ago

Infinite loops are a form of recursion.

geedee772• 17 years ago

Touches like this make me like Google even though I'm a Microsoft man really.

mziulu2• 17 years ago

Are the two incompatible?

geedee772• 17 years ago

No, not at all. I just meant that I don't subscribe to the 'Google are brilliant, Microsoft are evil' thing that's common these days.

ssn• 17 years ago

More info here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719408

csomar• 17 years ago

did you mean http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719408 ?

ScottWhigham• 17 years ago

Pfft - why would people downvote this? Come on, people...

messel4• 17 years ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/936v3/can_you_s...

messel4• 17 years ago

Ouroborus or reddit is the hated party here?

oz• 17 years ago

You prick!

You got me. Nice one.

katamole3• 17 years ago

I submitted this to reddit as opposed to HN thinking it was too low-brow / off-topic for here. I suppose I was wrong!

_pius• 17 years ago

I try to avoid taking stories from Reddit, but this merited an exception. Nice find!

katamole3• 17 years ago

Pure coincidence. I often look for definitions as a way of remembering certain keywords in text (sort of like taking mental notes).

The submission on reddit now has over 1200 upvotes which is crazy: it isn't that funny. Not to flog a dead horse, but the quality of that site really has gone down over the last two years or so.

bmickler• 17 years ago

that's witty.

meeech• 17 years ago

it would be interesting to know how google manages all their little easter eggs.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

Easter Bunny

Thanks for the downlinks I'll be here all day.

lacker• 17 years ago

Each team just manages the easter eggs in their own product, it's not like there is the Easter Egg Department which has goals for the quarter of x new easter eggs reaching y million people.

So in this case it's the same team that handles all the "did you mean" stuff.

messel4• 17 years ago

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/450906315/sizes/o/

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

It boggles my mind that anyone is impressed by such trivial things.

matt1• 17 years ago

Why? It's clever and it symbolizes Google's bubbly, geeky corporate personality. If I had to decide between working at two otherwise equal companies, I'd happily choose the one that encourages this type of playfulfulness. Small things like this matter a lot.

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

It is not clever. It's an old, old joke.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2049834_keep-idiot-busy.html

Deadly_B• 17 years ago

Thanks for sharing. Great find.

veerasundark• 17 years ago

nice thought.

Pistos2• 17 years ago

git branch --no-m 2>&1 | head -n 1

ellyagg• 17 years ago

After clicking on it a few times, it should say "did you mean 'stack overflow'?

rwolf• 17 years ago

Someone took the time to make this joke, but it doesn't make the search engine work any better for me. I like it when I find easter eggs in video games. I don't like it when I find easter eggs in tools I use for work.

edit: Since I'm yelling anyway, Google's highly-corporate, brand-spanning, massive April Fools jokes leave a bad taste in my mouth.

This is also the most annoying thing about Wolfram Alpha; except with Alpha it's easier to find easter eggs than the data you wanted.

bodhi• 17 years ago

I like. I'd also be really impressed if this wasn't an intentional easter egg, but was an emergent property of the "did you mean" feature itself.

Did you mean recursion?

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