Slashdot Mirror
Google Updates Its Face
whereiseljefe writes "About 12:00 am Central Time, at least when I saw it, Google changed it's face. Before it was a simplistic search engine, with a minimal front page, and now has become even more so. Those pretty tabs we have become accustomed to are now gone, and in the search results, the "summary" section at the top is now a faded blue bar (see here with a search returning ads). And the ads are a little more low key. Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface rather than adding spastically like Yahoo." Other folks noted that they've added Froogle and Local Directory pages have now been given links on the front page. Which is good, since inclusion in the main page tends to mean ready for prime time.
Google has a very smart team, a team who understand their market and cater to their every need. What I think is the best feature of Google is that they cater to their end-user, not their financial backers. To Google, it's important to please searchers, more so than advertisers. That makes me warm and fuzzy.
I would also point out, being a programmer myself, that reducing the bandwidth in each search is a positive goal for Google in cost reduction, and a positive side-effect to the reduction, is a much faster searching experience. Every bit counts when you have the traffic Google does.
Put them together and you have a winning team, with a winning service, and profit will ensue.
Sorry for sounding like a fan-boy, but I just can't say anything bad about Google, except maybe that the name Google is becoming annoying/overused, much like the over-play curse afforded to successful musicians.
NO ONE!
When they first bought in the Beta it didn't look too impressive to me (not being in the US), but it works pretty well and has a hell of a lot more shops.
Despite how much I hate advertising, when I actually *want* to see adverts about a product, it is hard to find.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
This isn't true for Slashdot. Spelling mistakes and malformed HTML are common on front-page (main-page, same thing) thanks to the "editing" staff.
The same godawful color schemes, ugly nexted tables, awful HTML code, etc.
Maybe slashdot should take a cue from google and update themselves.
It's good to see that it's not just me. I thought it was time to reformat Windows again.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
A great example of, "less is more". No, not pagers.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Come on... I mean, really.
A website added some links! News at 11!
Thank God - not another facial gone wrong.
I saw this a week ago or something, it was the dutch version btw. I dunno, maybe I'm just hallucinating but I think it is (again) old news
I just use safari or firebirds embedded google search... who needs a front page!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The new google lacks kaw-pow, pizazz! It doesn't reach out and grab you and scream in your face - read this X-TREME web page!
Look, this is 2004, and "understated" is synonymous with "loser". If you want to put the mazuma in da bank, baby, you gotta POP, SIZZLE!
And I know what I'm talking about - I'm a marketing exec in a Fortune 500.
"And the ads are a little more low key" . Really? I find them more intrusive than before, because they look like the search result, and thusly my eyes tend to catch them more than before. And I'm pretty sure that's the idea.
Underholdning.info
I particularly like the idea of seperating "Froogle", I hope in the long term this will bias commercial support away from the generic pages. When I want to know about Hawaii "per se" I am just not interest in tour operators and hotels!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
They don't look like Yahoo at all. When I go to Yahoo, I have to search for the search bar. That is not how it should be, and that is not how Google is.
The (definition) feature next to your search query does something I've sought for a long time - it searches dictionary.com. The built in "Define:search query" never worked well for me, so this is a pleasent surprise.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this interface before, well atleast the colour scheme, in firefox. I even compared it to IE and found that they were both different, was this a CSS rendering error, forgetting to include images, or the new interface?
really, did someone's graphic designer girlfriend post this?
okay, not girlfriend but rpg partner?
i'm just a bit confused about where the news is here. was there a change? yes. is it of minimal importance? yes.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Honestly I gotta say I got used to the old look... this is new and scary!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
GO VEGAN!! www.peta.com
That's probably because you go to the Yahoo homepage instead of the Yahoo Search homepage: http://search.yahoo.com/
I don't know. Before when the sponsored links were a different color it was easier to tell the difference between the ads and the rest. Now it looks like 2 columns of results on one page. Kind of tricky.
Google also announced their web alerts at the same time. Looks interesting, but not as feature complete as Google Alert which has been around for some time.
But I'll probably get used to it in a day or so, even though I happened to like the tabs :)
Is it just my imagination, or did the headlines in the top of the results page grow in size?
Unfortunately, it still doesn't validate!
All they did was change the layout.
With the old layout I could navigate the page blindfolded.
I had mouse movements down pat.
The tabs being close to the first search result was handy.
Now you have to navigate to the very top, center of the page.
I've never seen a reason to change an interface, just to change it.
The new look may be simpler but the old one had familiarity going for it.
Now that MS and Yahoo are picking up the pace and investing heavily against Google to outcompete it, is this really the time to change Google's look? Search functionality may be all that matters to a geek, but Google is mainstream now and has to worry about mainstream concerns, like "Branding". Google's old look was part of the Google "brand".
I may come off like Chicken Little given that this is such a small thing to be concerned about, but sometimes in the face of heavy competition the smallest things can turn the tide. I've seen it happen.
Another new feature is the Google Web Alerts, which seems to be a simple version of the existing independent API-based Google Alert service. Is this the first example of a Google API application being copied by the mother ship?
There was a time when the Yahoo homepage WAS the Yahoo Search homepage...
I will admit removing the little bits of excess are nice, but I actually liked the tabs, and used them alot (for images/news in particular) and liked them being under the search bar as my mouse would have been closer to that...
/. effect so we can all at least have an equal chance to troll about our opinions...
Anyways time will tell how this goes... On the flip side this is one site that can handle the
Bad submitter! Don't you know how Slashdot works during an election season? You have to find some way to blame these spastic additions on George Bush!
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
This has been around for a while. It was completely random for a while (for testing one would assume). I used to have a bookmark that would toggle the look back and forth, but I seem to have misplaced it.
I hate sigs.
Once you find the search bar on Yahoo, do a search and then compair the look and feel of the results page with the look and feel of the google results page.
I noticed the new interface just before this story was posted. I don't really like it. I much prefered the old "tabbed" interface. While the newer interface is minimalistic, it almost looks amaturish.
For instance, Google groups search result pages looks like they are formatted for a 800x600 resolution screen. Viewing it at a higher resolution forces a large white space between the search listings and the ads. I would have much prefered for the results to take up this space, fitting more results on the page at a time. If the group name is long, then the "View Thread" becomes unnatural looking wrapped between two lines. (example)
Maybe it's just new, but hopefully it'll grow on me.
You're thinking of Yahoo! the web portal. Yahoo!'s search engine page looks pretty plain to me. They haven't added anything to it.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Less is better. I'd like to see /. tone down their page as well, particularily that big honking ad on the right hand side. (yeah i know, subscribe if you don't want to see it, or block it, yada yada). What ever, it's a waste of both space and bandwidth.
What would be cool is if you could configure a web site to use your one stylesheet.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
In case of Slashdotting, here is the Google cache.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Is it me or are these new additions? Both look to be quite interesting, could be useful to know if new pages appear on a closely defined research topic. Not too sure about the personalised search yet havent had enough chance to play... Google Labs Link
https://www.google.com/accounts/
sign up now!
If you guys use Google's adsense, you might have noticed that have lot of new themes as well. I guess, to make the Ads blend in more with your webpages, and make them lowkey.
P.S. Google Adsense is Ad banner engine, using which you can add Ads on your website and generate some ca$h
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
But I did manage to read the article. When the summary turned into a detailed description, I figured it'd be quicker to just click on the link and see it for myself. Did I miss anything in the last half of the paragraph? Any insightful comments from the /. editors? I'm glad it wasn't slashdotted yet, from Slashdot readers or people at work going, "It's changed, really??" and then clicking refresh a dozen times in disbelief.
yahoo = 4 pages of CRAP google = a search box
Can someone mirror it please?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I just did that, and it seems to me with the change, Google looks less like Yahoo. For instance, Yahoo's ads are still in those blue boxes, whereas Google got rid of that. To what, more specifically, were you referring when you said it looked more like Yahoo? You'll have to forgive me; I'm not very observant!
The wikipedia article for Google still has the old look on the page. Could some one with a decent looking screenshot of the new google please add it?
The problem with the tabbed Google interface was that too many clickable elements were in the same space. I frequently found myself clicking on something other than the "Groups" tag by mistake, for example.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I fail to see how the now undistiguishable ads are any better than before. They seem to be "merged" with the rest of the interface and that is NOT good at all.
I find it interesting to see the slight variations of Google...geeky although it might seem - when I type http://www.google.com/ I am thrown to http://www.google.be/, so when I really want http://www.google.com/ I type http://www.google.com./ instead of using the "Go to Google.com" button (which sends me to the google.com page with a "Go to Google Belgium" button.
The definitive address with the dot at the end introduces itself as Google English in the graphic, but still has a "Go to Google.com" button, whilst clearly being the genuine definitive http://www.google.com./...but this version doesn't have the link to Froogle... :)
Phew - that's enough links to Google for one day!
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
What's curious, it looks in Lynx almost the same as in Mozilla!
Say what you want, I like it!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The Google interface is available in many languages, including H4x0r!
Learn to fly! www.beapilot.com
...awful pictures on the first page, and hideous tabs on the results-page.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
(1) The boxes made different length strings "web", "groups", "news" take up equal space. Now "web", the most important, has the smallest amount of space. It's the hardest to "hit".
(2) I don't want Froogle on every page. I don't go to Google to shop. It's okay in the "More".
Google begins to go the way of all search engines:
not a single one has not faded away yet. If this one isn't eventually replaced by another, it will be the first.
at least elgooG
still works!
http://www.google.com/bsd
The requested URL
oh well, I can wait.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
here, however, I suspect this may have leaked out 3 days too early.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I like simple interfaces. While I use Firefox for most of my browsing, I also like Dillo a lot. The new Google interface reminds of how many websites come up in Dillo. While Dillo lacks many features, (that other browsers include by default) this is done by design. It is supposed to be very lightweight and for many browsing tasks, Dillo works just fine. It's good to see that Google is going for less clutter and overhead, while so many others are charging in the other direction.
www.mikesmind.com - www.daddyworkathome.com - www.freetofarm.org - www.tenfoottable.com
I have google set to appear in Welsh by default, and that frontpage has not changed. It is only the english/standard frontpage that has changed as far as I can see.
I see the translation teams have some work to do...
I used to use Webcrawler exclusively for all my search and homepage needs. Then I noticed Google, which was still very much in its infancy. I switched to Google as I was still using an old 14.4 modem, and Webcrawler was becoming a bit more bloated than I liked. Even though I now have broadband I am very happy that both Webcrawler and Google have maintained a function over form attitude.
Don't click link...Its the arsehole again!
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
What are you talking about? At 9:13 AM EST, it looks the same as it always has...
But they still haven't fixed that thing where they can only index 2^32 pages. ("Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages", and 4285199774/2^32=0.998)
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J: www.google.com/+google&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The front page will take a bit getting used to (now w/o the tabs) (see: Google cache of Google). OK, so it's really not that big a deal, we'll get used to the new version where the "tab" links are more squished together (note to Google: there's all that whitespace between the links waiting to be liberated!).
The real kicker is the new search results pages. Instead of utilizing most of the page as before for the actual results, and using B/W text for explanations, now they are highlighted by this ugly MSN/Yahoo-like pale-blue/green combo, which, (*GASP*) looks oh-so-similar to the text ads that are taking almost 1/3 of the page on the right. (see example: new search page.)
Well, I guess I'm not in the position to criticize a free, powerful service. But I guess if they are going to keep it free, they might as well try to keep the user experience as nice as possible. I'll still be using Google just as much as before, but I guess I'll be nostalgically longing for the good ol' days^H^H^H^H, uh, I mean 6 hours ago.- Alpha out.
My homepage is set to Google News and thus was where I first noticed the changes. From the perspective of the front page and search results, the new look does quite well, but it's not as true for News IMHO. The side and top bars have retained their old looks, with brighter colors and well defined lines. Meanwhile, the links at the very top sport the new style, and don't seem to go well with the aforementioned items.
Search for a product, any product, a particular type of monitor, the model of your motherboard, your tv or vcr, the first kajillion hits are meta-pages directing you to other craptacular website that wants to sell you something Rarely, if ever, does the actual makers of your hardware turn up somewhere in the 20 first pages. If I want to buy crap I use froogle...
Uhm.. anybody else.. click "images"? :)
errm...
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The UI looks pretty much the same to me, except that Froogle and "more >>" are included.
Go to google's main page and type the following into the search box:
miserable failure
Now hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
Gotta love google.
Given the number of hits Google gets in a day (or even hour) how much bandwidth is being saved by using the stripped UI. I haven't compared the code for the old and new pages, but it seems like the new pages is lighter by at least a couple of tags.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Everyone I know uses Google... how could they just now be ready for prime time?
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
I like it, its not too much. I thinkit has an element of class and maturity about it. This is how searched engines should look. It does a very googd job, and looks very good as well. imo.
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
Excepting the "more >>" link, and a couple of the unimportant ones at the bottom, the h4x0r langauge page has been updated. Guess they are doing that work...
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
Dang...I knew about Google's Linux-targeted searches but I never remember to use it when I'm having having installation/upgrade issues.
Definitely going to bookmark that one...Google has saved my butt many-a-time during while learning Linux (but I've had to wade through a lot of irrelvant search results to get to what I needed).
I'm using Lynx. What's this "interface" you speak of? Sounds unnecessarily flashy and complicated, if you ask me...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
A new design is nice and all, but what are they doing to combat the link networks that artificially inflate their own pagerank scores? For some searches you just get pages and pages of hits from "directory" sites that you've never heard of (that no one in their right mind would ever be interested in using) serving you banners and popups.
READY.
#
Spastically generally refers to a specific physical disability, perhaps not the best term to use in this derogitary context given the number of disabled slashdot users is undoubtedly high. Lambast me as being overly PC but high tech is nothing if we use it to insult people surely ...
oh the irony! imagine google got slashdotted now
...Google goes public. That's when it will most likely jump the shark - just like most other high-flying tech companies forced to keep up that unrealistic opening stock price.
I predict you'll see them charging for more inclusive searches and trying to gouge their advertisers for more revenue.
Don't get me wrong, I hope I'm not right, but there's a long track record of others who have gone this way before. Google is smart, investors aren't.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Funny! I'd never seen that before..
:)
Hax0r.. Ahaahahhaha!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Yahoo!'s biggest problem, the one that irritiates most users whether they know it or not, is the excessive use of sponsored ads.
If you look on a Yahoo! search page returning sponsored results, you will see that they are displayed in now fewer than three pages (before results, after results, and on the right like Google).
Users can't help but think, "Why do I want to see sponsored results in any more than one place?" Subconsciously, they realize that Yahoo! is trying to get maximum ad revenue in minimum guaranteed-viewed space (hence you have to scroll over the ads to get to results and go to next page, as well as the sidebar ones).
Over at Google, they put the sponsored ads in one place, every time, in a clear and obviously-but-not-excessively different format.
This is a good step forward but still does not go far enough. We must erase this "user interface" tyranny. First of all - the title - i mean, gosh, it says "Google" in my browser title bar, in clear letters. Such gratuitous self-advertising is unnecessary and garish if you ask me. Please leave the title bar alone. Also, why is there so much busy text on the page. I'm a busy man, I can't be bothered to read all that. I count over 25 words on the front page alone! That adds up to countless more letters. And that is not even counting source code. I'm bewildered and confused. Also, they decieve the user by providing, two, TWO COUNT THEM, buttons to search. One says redundantly "Google Search" the other poses the existential statement "I'm Feeling Lucky". Now I appreciate free psychological therapy like the next person, but PLEASE Google, leave that up to the experts on daytime shows like Dr. Phil. Now I am left pondering whether I really feel lucky or not, or whether I only am doubting my luck because I am being presented with a challenge towards it, whether this is all my parent's fault, and ultimately feeling that I need not search the web, but rather within myself to find out who I truly am.
But Google not only presents these "submission" buttons, but a range of categories to manifest my self doubt. Images: Is there something wrong with my own self image? Groups: Am I accepted as a member of a group. News: Does anything interesting or newsworthey ever happen in my life? Froogle: Am I managing my finances appropriately, or will I squander my fate through illiteracy or bad spelling? More>>: Is there something missing in my hollow pointless life...do I need something more to fill the void?
And as a last kick in the teeth, Google must remind me at the bottom that the page is copyrighted, and that it is "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages", as if to say "you are not good enough to receive this page".
So, please stop the user interface terrorism Google!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Think about it, every time some woolbrained gimboid loads the yahoo front page (and I'm sorry to say that there are many on them every second) think of the bandwidth that was wasted loading the flash animation advertising pet shampoo and the giant Yahoo banner, it's like page spam, google has only one image, an 8.75kb gif, if everyone followed this minimalist approach think how much less congested the net would be and how much faster, I wouldn't have to pay through the nose to get internet fast enough to get the latest distro before its out of date....
"The stupider people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them..."
The link to the directories should've been left on the first page.
This is Google that we are talking about here. Not all the /. readers in the world could pull it down!
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
and if we can't, can we google slashdot, with the net effect of slashdotting slashdot?
Several pages with tabs... if by tabs you mean the same old Google interface:
i versity
http://directory.google.com/Directory
http://www.google.com/options/universities.htmlUn
http://www.google.com/unclesam.Gov
http://www.google.com/linuxLinux
http://www.google.com/mac.htmlMac
http://www.google.com/bsdBSD
http://www.google.com/microsoft.htmlMircosfot
Not that it matters or anything, but they're still there, so stop arguing their existence.
Was the old google page really that slow? I honestly liked the old one much better. The only advantage I can see of this one is for lynx (or other text-based) browser users.
Even if that's serious, I'm splitting my sides!
No, but it was probably downloaded billions of times a day. Every byte helps in a sitation like that.
--- Ban humanity.
The new version doesn't seem to automatically post a link to the directory that a site fits into. I found this to be a great feature and used it all the time.
You can still search in the directory, but I miss the convenience of having the directory link automatically posted for my lazy ass.
That's what I get for trying too hard.
.Gov
Directory
University
Linux
Mac
BSD
Mircosfot
I saved a copy of the page at the following URL: http://www.phrise.com/google.html (I added <base href=http://www.google.com/> at the top.)
If you're seeing the same thing, please reply...
I am in Canada, and I CANNOT get to www.google.com, it always re-directs me to www.google.ca. Even if I explicitly try to reach the .com.
How about other countries? Do you get www.google.uk, www.google.au, etc?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Look harder:
-The index is full of spam, worse than it has been in ages. Seriously. Not as bad as the new Yahoo, but still bad.
-The new 'redesign' has made the sponsored links on the right look more like search results to drive more money into their pockets.
-They are now one of the Internet's largest advertising agencies.
-The toolbar they use sends information back to google, and as harmless as you may think that is, they're lying about the uses already - personal experience statement
What I like is the new "big page of all services": Everything on one page, this wasn't here before in such a overseeable way, the buttons are big so it's also a quick page. Another change nobody has remarked yet is that the link to the directory has been removed - which is a good change since a directory search always showed the same search results that a normal websearch would. In other news, the transition is not over yet: the directory still shows the old layout with tabs (at least it does for me). Searching the directory still shows web results instead of categories - if I were Google, this would be the next thing to fix (e.g. a search for Java would show the categories - for the programming language - for coffee - for the island which it currently does not.
You insensitive clod! Do you not know what spastic actually means? Get a clue and just don't use it in this context, and certainly not on t'internet. It is offensive. That is all.
Good job google...you continue to rock
--pete
Did you happen to notice the "recently found" on the froogle main page
Click here to do a froogle search for linux.
They've added very little clutter for a lot of extra usablity. If you click "more" it takes you to their services and their "special services" :0)
section has BSD and Linux specific search limiters which I think is quite nice and the logo's are cool too
Really, who gives a fsck?
Whats next on slashdot 'CNN updates its daily stories'?
I can. Many people look at Google as an authoritative source. Hence, the gripes you hear about businesses who are made or broken by their Google search result rankings. Now we have Froogle. The danger is worsened even more if people view Froogle as authoritative. Last week I was searching for non-U.S. made baby strollers. I found strollers using normal Google that I couldn't find in Froogle. The only thing I trust Froogle for is to view quick thumbnails of products. For most of my product searches I must rely on complex queries to bypass the senseless froth I see rising to Google's surface more and more these days.
My one wish for Google is for it to face stiff competition. I look forward to anyone who can topple Google with a better engine.
Hurry, call your consultants!
The Int32b (integers overflowing after they fill up 32 bits) crises is upon us!
Insurance companies, start calling Google to offer Int32b coverage!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Anyone using a speech browser? The layout still relays heavily on tables. So I guess speech output not optimal.
I reformatted a computer a month of two ago...and when I went to Google...it looked *JUST* like this. I checked on neighboring computer (even erased the cache)...and it was what I expected. I checked the URL countless times, but I was typing it in correctly. Is this just spooky or what?
<blockquote>
Product search results for modchip
PS2 Pre-Wired Internal ModChip - $12.95 - ModChipStore.com
Official Magic V 50K ModChip - $25.99 - ConsoleSource.com
PlayStation 2 PS2 Modchip Service - Lifetime Warranty - $85.00 - Sell.com
</blockquote>
I saw that there is a Microsoft search just like there is one for Linux. So my question is if you chose to feel lucky on this type of search, are you prone to get viruses? (grin)
Taadaaaa! -- I think the new look started showing up randomly for people in December and the whole bookmark exploit started showing up late February.
Interesting.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Although they've gone over 4.000.000.000 (*quite* a nice number), the number of pages Google indexes is still below 2^32. How long is it going to take them to cross that dreaded threshold?
OK I'm a Tele2 client.
But I don't live in Sweden so IP sniffing and sending me to a search engine in Swedish is pretty counter productive...
realkiwi
Not a rant, but just my personal opinion on the future of google. I really think google is a great search engine but there are too many vital flaws that prevent it from being the one true search engine (not that there exists a stand-in yet).
First of all, google's algorithm is one-tracked - it simply ranks by number of occurences. Sure this makes sense from a pure data perspective - but what about relevance and what a searcher might want to find, surely, if we type 'apple' we might expect to find a great page noting all the scientific fact and other trivia associated with the fruit - of course, not so.
Next, the ability to filter out information spammers or rings of websites with dummy pages filled with keywords to gain a search hit monopoly.
also: Distinction between types of searches - are we looking for something commercial? (if so, then apple should yeild a link to mac's site) are we looking for science related material? (maybe we need only urls with universities or research institutions)
Finally, a unified search engine is an infrastructural piece of software and might be better in the public domain rather than remain proprietary. I think there is some potential for an open source s.e. to become a google-killer.
-sloptaco
There is no "12:00 AM". There is an 11:59 PM and a 12:01 AM. The proper term is "Midnight".
if you think this new version is too cluttered, I found that Google is working on a newer version. See Below:
Google
_____________
|___________|
_______________
|Google Search|
---------------
I almost cried when I saw it change.... I mean, google was awesome with the blue tabs, and it actually served a function i.e. you knew what tab you were on, so why change it?
- If your search matched a category, it was displayed at the top.
- If a particular hit matched a site in the directory, the category for this site was shown above the "URL - cached" line of the hit.
The old behaviour can still be seen when using an odd language setting (like Swedish chef). See for instance this search for "java":http://www.google.com/search?hl=xx-bork&q=java and compare it with the new google interface:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=java
I think this is a sad loss of functionality. The link to directory categories served two purposes for me: First, it was some kind of extra "quality" check -- if a web site was listed in the directory, it was more likely to be the site I was looking for. Second, it informed me in a non-intrusive way that a directory category existed that'd probably help me in my search.
And to add insult to injury, Google has removed the simple link to Directory from the "tabs", so you have to first click "More>>" to find the Directory search, making it even hard to use it. I wonder if this is the first step in stopping to support the dmoz directory?
They've done more than a facelift. My Blogger (now owned by Google) archives were being intermittently indexed over the past few months. At times I could retrieve items via Google, at other times I could not.
Today I can search them. I wonder if they've done a major maintenance cycle on their indices? That would fit with the speedup reports.
BTW, I do enjoy using the new "define" feature. Try "define: glycoprotein" for example.
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
This isn't new, Google has been tracking (some) clicks for years. Not everyone will see it for the same reason that not everyone has seen the new interface for the last couple of months: depending on the unique 'visitor id' in your Google preferences cookie, you may or may not.
As for the gloom-and-doom, IMHO this is totally benign. Google is most likely using these statistics to do usability testing ("How many links do people need to click on for this search to get what they're looking for?") or algorithm tweaking (actually using click-thrus as an input for PageRank).
It popped up randomly based on a randomly set cookie. You could also switch it on manually in preferences for maybe about a month now.
Do you have a
First thing I noticed is that their homepage doesn't validate as correct HTML because it's missing the DOCTYPE part... :
.000000002 Gigabytes...
Then I remembered that they get 1800 queries per second, that means also about 1800 homepage/result page views.
So to have the page validate would cost them about
1800 * 3600 * 24 * 150 bytes (size of the DOCTYPE def. to be added) = 21.72 Gigabytes of Bandwidth per day!!!
You can't refuse these kind of savings...
On the other hand, some of the special language versions certainly add more than 150 bytes to the homepage length...
just my
Q.
Thus I don't expect Microsoft to acquire them for the next few eons.
Same with "litigious bastards! Gotta love that Google!
we could /. google! That would teach 'em.
Opera users have been seeing the "new" page for quite a while when they use the integrated google search. I've been wondering what's been going on until today...
Searching for "kolmogorov zero-one", the results lead to what's essentially an outdated Wikipedia snapshot, but with popups and fucking blinking ads. The actual Wikipedia text does not appear in the first ten results.
Buncha punks. They bury a tag at the bottom of the page mentioning that they use some Wikipedia content by the GFDL, but they're still a bunch of worthless punks...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
By far the most useful feature I think:
Interface Language Options
Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface ..."
:-)
I think they off-shored it... Cheaper, but less innovative.
I think this 1997 snapshot proves your statement false!
Have you noticed the calculator ? Quite cool !
One of their head guys says their main directive is "Don't be evil" in terms of efforts.
This is a sad day for the Internet: Google has truely shot itself in the foot. Where are the big banner ads? the pop-ups? Where are the unrelated search results, obfuscated by even more unrelated "sponsored" search "results"? And why is it useful? It's the sad truth, but alas Google is living in the past, instead of looking to the future. (- Insert obligotary "BSD is dead" parody here -)
Seriously though, wandering around on ZDNet, I found that Google has launched a personalized search engine. I tried it out, and I'll tell you what -- it kicks major ass. Let's say you are trying to look up information for a particular or specialized search term on the traditional Google, it may give you some random unrelated results, those of another domain you wish to consult about; on Google Personalized Search, you specify which domain you want to search about and it will provide you with more pertinent results. Kudos to Google, once again.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
Look at Altavista now by yourself, you'll see how clean it is NOW. AltaVista means "a view from above". It is developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1995 in its Palo Alto research labs. (This is the reason you see DEC ads in its 1998 version) However, it was bought by Overture several years ago, which in turn was bought by Yahoo. Its database has been merged with that of AlltheWeb.
I'm serious...the top post has that disgusting image with that guy bent over with arse..can't even remember the link that is so common on /. for that...This is just a warning...
This is not a troll...check out parent of post to find out if you don't mind being offended!
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Sorry, I must have replied to the wrong post...the link I had was to the really horrible image of the guy bent (I can't even say it without wanting to throw up)...It wasn't meant to be a troll...I apologise...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Plus, now they are breaking a cardinal rule, they are using links as buttons. Not such a big deal, but annoying to web design type people.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Why the heck couldn't they have added a link to popup a search result. I'm constantly holding down the shift key to pop a result item in case it's not exactly what I wanted.
The time sounds just about right. I was paging through a search at about 15 sec/page, hit the next button and went "wtf is this?" I figured I'd hit a wrong link or had accidentally searched with goofle or noogle or doodle or something, looked at the url, hit the back button, turned off evil javascript, tried again and finally decided that they had changed their look.
The strange thing is that I feel like I've seen the look before and I believe that looks like a previous face of alltheweb , who also changed their look a while ago.
Sigs are bad for your health.
It's nice to see there are companies out there so focused on _design_ - like Apple. Less *is* more - take everything unnecessary away. It'll save people a split second having to look at extra "stuff"--and this adds up.
Microsoft still doesn't seem to understand this (but then again, the general population doesn't seem to get it, either. More features must be more valuable.)
Google can change the most minute detail of their page, and the world notices, because their page is so minimal. Yahoo, on the other hand, with their excessivly cluttered home page, could put the goatse guy on their page and half the visitors wouldn't even notice.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Google is nothing special...it's just another student-made search engine. the content in the database is about a year old. For the hardware it has and the number of users that go there, it's pretty slow too. oh, i forgot, it knows about linux, so it's good. my bad. (who cares if it was hardcoded in there...)
It was also prone to the Slashdot effect then, it seems! How times change...and how wrong can some /.'ers be? ;)
Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)
No kidding.
Six years later: Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Google updated IT'S face?
Please. Could we get people who attended school beyond the second grade to post stories?
I'd hope that by now, everyone would know "it's" means "it is" and "its" is a possessive.
Let's hope this idiot doesn't spell this way on hi's (doesn't that look stupid?) resume.
A long time Google fan, I was excited to use froogle to search for a Nintendo Gamecube console (I searched for "gamecube console"... no quotes). It did find the lowest price of any price comparison shopper however a trip to that merchant's site revealed that the froogle quote, $79.99, was wrong! The merchant was asking $94.15 (plus shipping). This could easily be the merchant gaming froogle but I have not had this problem elsewhere.
With that sort of an inaccuracy I will stick with shopper.com, mysimon.com and pricegrabber.com for the time being (I also like the shipping cost calculations of these other sites).
It will be interesting to see if, if they go public, they start whoring out the site to everyone who'll give them a buck. Maybe you'll go to google and get popups saying 'I took the liberty of putting a link to AOL on your desktop. AOL WITH TOPSPEED TECHNOLOGY. DALE EARNHARDT JUNIOR LIKES IT!'. It is truly a nightmare scenario, but I mention it based on real life experience with some real life marketeers.
Before it was a simplistic search engine
Erm... I think the submitter was mistaking interface simplicity for implementation/functional simplicity. Google's a brilliant example of interface simplicity, but I doubt it's nearly so simple behind the facade. They also seem to nicely follow the rule of least suprise.
Not all browsers support CSS (or javascript for that matter), and some users have gone and turned it off. Google uses those to enhance the site, but they don't flat-out require them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, at least unexpected behavior.
This bug affects Safari and IE for Mac OS X. It does not affect Mozilla (for Mac OS X or XP) or IE 6.5 on XP. I haven't tried other browsers. Here are steps to replicate it:
Go to the Google home page.
Enter any search term.
Click on the word "Froogle"
From the Froogle results page, back arrow once in the browser to return to the Google home page.
Click on the "Google Search" button.
Instead of a Google search, it does the Froogle search again.
This bug also affects the "News" section.
Reported this to Google. I want a damn t-shirt!
...what does this mean?
Google cache of the old Google
: ww w.google.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J
But not me.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
I've never seen such a useless and moronic story posted to Slashdot in my LIFE, and especially get SO MANY replies.
The front page of google has been like this for weeks, all they added was the Froogle link off the top.
Come on, people, get with it...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I am not sure if I remember this acurately but if you do a search for make money fast you now get two sponsored links at the top under the 'Web banner.' I think that in the past google would put the ads to the side in a yellow box. Please tell me that I am simply rememberint this incorrectly, and that my mind was just trained by the old google to avoid those links. If that is the case, then the same will happen again and I will not notice them again soon.
I have the dutch toolbar. In the past this just resulted in a setting of the default language to dutch without me being able to do much against it. Now it has become worse: when I type "www.google.com" I am automatically redirected to "www.google.nl".
Google, please stop playing Big Brother!
What will happen if I press that ominous "I'm feeling lucky" -button? Will Harry Callahan show up and shoot me with he's .44 leaving nothing than my fingerprints? Or does that only happen to punks?
Dang it. I used to use Google's "News and Resources" page (http://www.google.com/news/), which is now broken. Why can't the good old stuff survive?
Phooey.
Hey thanks, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Now we just need lots of people to report spam sites!
READY.
#
I don't think this is a corrupt installtion (unless we're talking about entirely different bugs, which is possible). It just doesn't happen every time you visit the page, so it might have seemed like uninstalling fixed it. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527 is the bug number in Bugzilla, although at the moment most of the comments are worthless "me too!" posts.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I've recently noticed that Google has started pulling pages in response to DCMA complaints. Has anyone else noticed this? I've tried to do a search for this topic on SlashDot, but I really must say that SlashDot's search engine returns crappy, useless results.
Anyways, I tried to submit this as a story, but it got rejected. But JOY, there's a new fucking tabless page and that gets posted! Can someone wake me up, is this the world we live in? Is this important news?
So. I've taken to a new strategy, of which this post is the first step. I will now begin submitting my stories to existing slashdot articles, no matter what the topic.
Furthermore, I will write an automated query agent to submit my story as the first post to the next available article that appears.
All bow down before the man who would not shut his mouth...
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] table[width="25%"][bgcolor="#ffffff"][align="right "] { display: none !important }
" ] td[valign="bottom"][height="30"] { display: none !important }
" ] { display: none !important }
I also don't care for the tips, or the product/store linkage if searching for products.
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] table[cellspacing="0"][cellpadding="0"][border="0
body[onload="document.gs.reset()"] p.e table[cellspacing="0"][cellpadding="1"][border="0
I bet your an SEO consultant
I am switching to search.yahoo.com for as many searches as possible effective now.
Disclaimer: I am not the parent poster.
You are a fucking idiot. It was indeed a goatse screenshot, and it was a fucking warning to those people who browse at -1. When you fucking mod something -1, it's because someone obviously is trolling, which the parent was obviously not. Hopefully you will get metamoderated to shit as it's apparent you can't handle simple, mundane excercises such as thought.
Go home and die.
Who is the fucking idiot that rated this troll? HOW IS THIS A TROLL?! It's a valid point. At WORST it deserves a 0, but a -1? Save that shit for the real trolls, you goddamn fools. May you get metamoderated to shit.
OK, yes it's redundant, but it's not -1 worthy for the love of Christ! A -1 means goatse or a troll, which this is NOT. May you metamoderated to shit, you stupid wankers.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Now that AOL has 'Powered by Google' search, and Google has an even cleaner UI, maybe even AOL users will be able to find something worthwhile on the web. (Besides 'Hampster Dance' or goat.se or what ever they do on line.)
Your sig here!
At least you get see Tux!
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
... they want their web designs back.
Minimalist = good. This looks spare and amateurish. Why ruin a good thing?
to quote the sarge from red vs. blue, "I thought I told you to quit making animals up." Dude, what are you bitching about? The colors are almost exactly the same! The links were always blue, the actually url was always green, and the similar search, cache, and deeper linking was always light blue. They've not changed the colors one bit!!!!
On the nz version the change was implimented over a week ago. You guys are so last year ;P
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
Wow. That looks like crap.
I end up with a column of search results on the left, a column of ads on the right, and a big empty column of white space in the middle.
Looks like somebody coded for 800x600.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
i like the new look to google
Just a thought: considering the amount of http hits they get daily/hourly/minutely or even every second, it just makes sense to serve as simple pages as possible. If not only for the bandwidth but also processing time: creating a 60KB HTML page out of a template takes only slightly more than a 5KB HTML page but considerably more when you multiply that by a few thousand hits per second, divided by the available processing power (even if they have much of that, too), it all starts to matter again.
When I went to Google today and the tab things weren't there, I freaked out. I mean, I didn't know wheatear to think the apocalypse had finally come or what! So after not finding anything about the home page alteration on Google, I crawled to a corner and curled up into the fetal position until I just had to have my /. fix and found this article telling me everything was going to be OK.
/. for saving my sanity!
Thanks
The world will never be the same
"Submit a patch if you want."
Doesn't seem like much of a priority.