Marissa Mayer, Product Manager for Google, gave a presentation at PARC that reveals some interesting Google trivia. Alan Williamson was there and notes on his blog some of the more interesting details that he heard. For example, The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface.. And all this time, Google has been touted for its genius for coming up with the bare-bones design. So the next time you hear an SEO spout off remarks about the incredible genius of the Google algorithm, keep in mind that maybe it is all just a bunch of hooey.