Google's ingenious marketing and creative departments -- the folks who tirelessly reinvent the company's logo in the form of "doodles" (and by so doing seem to have taken branding to a whole new realm) -- have produced a new and equally irresistible gimmick.
This time around, as noticed by AllThingsD's Mike Isaac, it's a change to the Google home page's iconic "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
When you mouse-over the button, it "spins" like the display on a slot machine and stops on any one of several "I'm Feeling..." phrases, among them: I'm Feeling Doodley, I'm Feeling Stellar, I'm Feeling Puzzled, and I'm Feeling Artistic.
Click on one of the phrases, and you're served a page that has to do with a Google effort and/or product or service that's relevant to that particular phrase.
Just now, for example, I gave the button a whirl, and it stopped at "I'm Feeling Playful." When I clicked I got a page about Google's doodle for "Gumby" creator Art Clokey's 90th birthday -- complete with behind-the scenes images such as an early sketch of the doodle and some production shots of the doodle's animation being put together. A link to the Doodles home page and a link to the "Doodles on Demand" store on the Zazzle Web site rounded things out.
"I'm Feeling Trendy" brought up the "Hot Searches" page that's normally accessible through a link on the Google Trends home page. "I'm Feeling Stellar" delivered a page about the Hubble Telescope and the Crab Nebula in the Explore section of the Google Earth site. You can take the button for a spin yourself and see what else appears.
As Issac notes, the ploy is a clever Easter-eggy way to introduce the millions of people who visit Google's home page each month to the company's various offerings.