Mountain View, CA — Internet search giant Google announced adding a “Feeling Lucky” option to its popular Google Maps product. The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is one of Google’s oldest, continuous features. After its removal back in 2010 to make way for Google Instant, it was brought back from the dead in 2020. And it’s been such a hit with its search product. As a result, the company is now adding to maps.
Legislators express concern over the new Google Maps options after a man jumped off the Auburn, CA Foresthill Bridge because Google told him to. The bridge was unharmed.
“I’m not entirely sure what this Googly thing is,” said conservative California Republican Doug LaMalfa, “but I do know what feeling lucky is all about. And Googly feeling lucky has bad written all over it from what I can tell. I mean, look what this Googly thing has done to our elections and censorship.”
After several recent mishaps, which included an editor for the Sierra’s Club Sierra Magazine getting stuck on a snowy Sierra mountain road after using Google maps to re-route her around the closed Interstate 80, critics charge adding a “feeling lucky” option is a bad idea.
“Look, the Internet is already impairing people’s rational judgment,” said Professor James Badwater of the University of Chicago’s Badwater Institute for Alternative Geography, “and bringing this level of automation into ordinary people’s lives is dangerous. I mean, just because we can build it doesn’t mean we should build it.”
Google has not responded to requests for comment.
