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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.
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
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
Thank God - not another facial gone wrong.
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 ;-)
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.
Google isn't valid HTML either. And they still use an embedded style element rather than a highly-cachable external stylesheet, and still use crap like <body bgcolor=#ffffff...
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Hah. My thoughts exactly. I almost added a droll comment about the sheer amount of submissions on SOMETHING THAT MATTERS NOT AT ALL, while meanwhile, Mars has confirmed methane which means most probably microbial life.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
In case of Slashdotting, here is the Google cache.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
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
They've been randomly testing it on various people. I first saw it at least a month ago; I think it's at least a few weeks older than that.
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 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
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...
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.
HTML is broken, not google.
LaTeX - it's not just for bootie calls
Important: Note that google is not affiliated with the authors of google.com or responsible for its content.
--
Wanna play some word games?
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.
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.
#
More interesting is the wayback machine's caches of Google:
Before link,
After link.
Hey, that's my password you are typing
...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..."
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?
If you click the first link and snoop around a bit, you can find information and pictures of the server google was running on in '98. Ahem, and I quote
These are both 300 MHz Dual Pentium II Servers with 512MB of RAM. There are 9 9G drives between the two machines. The main search used to run on them. These were donated by Intel.
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 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.
- 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?
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
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...
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.
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
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.
But not me.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech