Logging in is annoying and slows you down. My job these days is mostly about reducing that pain, ideally to zero by eliminating it. Google really wants this to happen; here are two reasons why, one general and one specific.

In general, we’d like everyone to spend lots of time online. Less logging in improves the experience, so there you go; not rocket science.

But let’s be more specific: Suppose we give you a browser and offer you a challenge like “What’s a good mountain bike?” or “Find a doctor for your kid”.

In this situation, Google really wants you to type things like “good mountain bike” or “Knoxville pediatrician” into the search box. Then we get to do our best job of sending you off to the right bicycle or doctor (we put billions into this) and at the same time show maximally useful ads (billions into that too, but we get paid for it). What could be simpler?

More often than you’d think, people don’t; they click in the address bar and type in the URL of a big bookstore or Somebody’sList, as a first step on their search. When we ask why, surprisingly they often say ”Oh, if I found something good on a random site out there I’d have to log in, and either remember my stupid password or fight through the stupid sign-up page.” The numbers are probably secret, but they’re very significant.

So if logging in gets simpler (or vanishes) we win and you win. It’s that simple. Have I mentioned lately that I have a cool job?