Google's X Files Vanish

An anonymous reader writes "News.com reports that Google's latest technology experiment paid tribute to Apple Computer, but the Mac OS X-themed version of the search king's Web site was taken down a day after its debut. Though that particular page was taken down, there is a screenshot here displaying how the icons were magnified as the mouse hovered over them."

Comments

Before anyone jumps to conclusions...

[daveschroeder]

...as others in many other forums today have, there is, at least at present, absolutely no proof that Apple legal necessarily did anything here. By all accounts, it was a project by an individual Google engineer that a manager liked enough to display publicly via Google Labs. The creator himself said it was the result of "a fun late-night coding jaunt to help me learn Javascript and DHTML." After other Google managers, executives, or legal staff saw it, there is a distinct possibility that Google itself pulled it because of anything from concerns over possible infringement, to the product not being approved by by the proper authorities before public consumption, to internal disagreement about the rollout process to Google Labs.

To those who may be so inclined to immediately blame Apple, I would say: wait until any facts in this particular instance actually support that position.

Re:Before anyone jumps to conclusions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... The script is post-processed. It's
been removed of white space, and all functions
renames to single or double var names--all to
save space the speed loading.

*Obviously* people don't code this way.

Re:Variable names...

[lukewarmfusion]

Not easy to read or manage, but it sure downloads fast. And if you're serving it to a few million visitors a day, those add up fast in bandwidth savings.

He shouldn't have to keep his mouth shut

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Some guy noodling around in his 20% time to profess his love for OS X hardly seems like something the legal department (or any damn department) should concern themselves with.

Then again, I've had a few beers and can imagine the world, with a few minor tweaks, being perfect like that.

Host it locally

[Sergeant Beavis]

Just host the code locally on your drive and bookmark Google to it. Then you can enjoy it as your Google homepage for now on.

This is NOT useable

[GoClick]

Mod me down, do whatever you want, just because I'm not impressed every time Google jumps.

Part of the goodness of Google is how simple it is.

I'm sorry but I don't associate a compass with local searches, The word Local is much better, I can read 10 links in the same time it takes to move the mouse over 1 icon to figure out what it does.

It's just a script-trick. Yes it's fun, yes it's good looking, no it's not accessable or bandwidth friendly. It's not even that well coded.

This is just another stupid trick but because it's Google it gets press attention?

Frankly, that's kind of silly. There are a lot more cutting edge things floating around out there than images that resize when you roll over them.

Re:This is NOT useable

[kidlinux]

Well, maybe if you'd step back and look at the larger picture, you'd realise some of the implications this presents.

If and when google does its thing and releases a client/server OS or platform where all the apps are served up over the web, this little trick demonstrates that it's possible to make a very nice looking, very slick, and user friendly interface similar to that of a full blown OS currently on the market.

Eye candy is apparently possible, and it is necessary. The average user will most likely select their platform based on the look and feel first, then functionality - which is about the same way most people make all their purchases.

This IS usable.

Re:We all know why

[cmallinson]

...a famous law suit against a software product and it was decided that you cannot patent or copywrite the 'look and feel' of software.. .. only the code underneath

Precedents aside, the look and feel of software is not always separate from the functionality. The function of a lot of software these days is to make hard things easy, and much of that has to do with the GUI.

Re:We all know why

[twbecker]

Explain to me how Google is a monopoly? People use it because they prefer it, not because they have no choice, big difference.