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Google Accessible Search Released
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google today released Accessible Search, a Google Labs product aiming to rank higher pages which are optimized for blind users. Google asks you to adhere to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines if you want to make sure your pages are accessible (and thus, rank better on Google Accessible Search). I wrote a small tool to compare results of default and accessible results."
From the Accessible Search FAQ:
How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?
Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter -- especially extraneous content -- and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation
I wish more sites where like that. Do you want info? You get it right there, without all the mumbo-jumbo associated with most current websites.
As opposed to the inaccessible search one gets on http://www.google.cn/ ?
+ is+good&meta=
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Many aren't at present, that's the whole point of making it easier to find those that are. Of course, making pages as device independent as practical helps many others as well as the blind.
Blind people can use screen readers, but if you bury your content in flash or in images without alt text, it makes it very difficult (impossible really) for the screen reader to know what to say. Also, if you position everything in tables and it loads in a weird order but looks right when it hits the screen, it presents problems, since the reader won't know that the 5 rows down actually explains the 3 columns over.
.html (or .php or whatever) source files nice, clean and logical. A simple test is, if you can read your source file easily (ie in notepad or vi or whatever) then you're probably ok.
CSS can help with this, as it keeps the formatting away from the content, but you still have to keep your
I somehow think that a search for "Adobe", "Photoshop", etc. will still give you adobe.com as the #1 result, despite its accessibility problems.
Well, I assume blind people use text-readers as one of their tools; So this pretty much would make any Flash-based site useless.
I also think proper html-tags might help, so they can easily distinguish content from options/framework.
FYI: Slashdot.org is an "accessible page" http://www.google.com/u/accessible?cx=accessible!& q=slashdot&btnG=Search
So is digg.com:
http://www.google.com/u/accessible?hl=en&lr=&ie=IS O-8859-1&cx=accessible!&q=digg&btnG=Search
But microsoft.com is not:
http://www.google.com/u/accessible?hl=en&lr=&ie=IS O-8859-1&cx=accessible!&q=microsoft&btnG=Search
There has been standards for blind web browsing for many years! The problem is that hardly anyone use them, even a lot of government web sites which by law must be accessible.
The amazing thing is that google, by page-ranking these pages higher, I believe it will do more to improve web accessibility than any law or standards organisation could.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
I didn't get it initially but this is one of the best tool google ever gave us, most spam sites designer do not care for standards and are left out of the 'accessible' results. I think I'm going to switch to the new sevice soon.
With Google's "Accessable search", sites will be able to tell from their weblogs how many visitors are coming in via the "accessable search" route. So it will be possible to figure out the financial benefit of web accessability. If it turns out to be low, even for pages that Google thinks are "accessable", there's a business case for not bothering with "accessability".
Finally I can start using Links2 or even Lynx to start browsing or any other curses based browser... mmm... gopher. Will work perfectly with my pine mail and telnet based IRC.
I really commend google for providing us and maybe even forcing webdevelopers to use decent, W3C compatible standards. This means soon enough, we'll have websites that aren't IE compatible.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It seems I'm not being served any sponsored links on this one. Nice. I also note that searching for "white house" will put the Wikipedia article above the official home page, as opposed to what happens on the regular search.
blind people. i think we all can benefit from this simple and straightforward representation of search results. i actually like the new accessible interface. it was a kind decision by google to not put any ads in their accessible search. i think more people will use the google accessible search than just the blind people.
so, has anyone tried using any of the screen reading software to test whether search results are actually readable without looking at the screen?
and also what about keyboard shortcuts? since blind people can't use mouse, there must be some other way for them to find a search box / search result, right?
Check out Pandora by Music Genome Project
There are always sites like www.aintitcool.com that prove that some places are willing to give employment opportunities for the blind by letting them engage in web site design.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Perhaps you need to open your eyes then.
A well designed standards based website is built in a uniform standard way and contains all the hints required for a screenreader to pickup on.
Badly designed sites use lots of custom content and stupid user interface elements which make it difficult to access (both from a blind screen readers perspective and usually from a normal users view.
liqbase
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flab s.google.com%2Faccessible%2F
(neither is any of google's web pages).
I don't want a signature.
It depends. If you actually talk to a blind person, tables aren't as annoying as people using characters between links. For instance, doing navigation with a pipe (vertical bar) or some other character sounds strange to them. I worked for someone who was blind and owned their own business for a time. He said cnet was one of the most annoying web properties for him to use. At the time their navigation sounded terrible and was quite randomly placed. He also didn't like navigation at the top as much except on the first page. Worst of all, he hated hearing. about us vertical bar products veritcal bar etc...
Oh and he used Internet explorer. His software tied in with that so it looked like an ie hit and even tried to load all the crap everyone else deals with in IE. He did IE on windows using a dell.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Image ALT Tags are useful for more than text-based browsers - they also help blind users surf the web. When images are used as links, the ALT text can help a blind user know what they're getting into before following the link. ComputerWorld had a decent article on websites and their accessibility - they found that most online shopping websites (Like Target or Walmart) don't have any helpful information in the filenames or ALT tags of their images, making it much harder to shop online.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information ("data tables"). Content developers should avoid using them to lay out pages ("layout tables"). Tables for any use also present special problems to users of screen readers (refer to checkpoint 10.3).
Even Google's ultra-simple front page violates this guideline, despite zero need to do so.
Point 3 of the guidelines says this:
Mark up documents with the proper structural elements. Control presentation with style sheets rather than with presentation elements and attributes.
But if you dig into the source of google.com, you see cruft like this:Google fails rather dramatically to implement any web standard, not even including a doctype. These problems aren't limited to their front page, either. news.google.com is just as bad or worse.
This is really a shame. The content that google presents is lightweight and free of the layout challenges that can sometimes make web standards difficult to follow: Google should be the perfect test case for perfect standards and accessibility. Instead, it's a throwback to 1996 web design. That they're launching a tool to test accessibility to the blind is incredibly ironic.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I wonder if this will impact the paying advertisers. As long as your money is green, you can cut to the beginning of the line.
"Does this wine taste funny to you?" -- Socrates
You're pathetic :) Have a good day.
My son is blind. He uses the web with a reader, and loves google. He searches for music, among other things. It's pretty amazing how effecient he is with it, given he can't see. Some sites work better than others. It is possible to optimize a site for the blind. You're ignorant.
http://cubemonkey.net/quotes -- fortune-mod quote generator
calm down k
-- lol pwned
From what I've read of the guidelines, my website gopher://gopherrulez.org just won't cut it!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
At least they are honest: http://blog.outer-court.com/accessible/?q=google They don't put their own page on the top, as it isn't very "accessible"... :-)
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
So having all your script read on one line is a bad thing?
:-D
Writing ASP script I always add " & vbcrlf" at the end of a "Response.write" line of code. Makes it a lot easier to find errors anyway...
I know, Perl, PHP, RoR is better. (Added for karma. Why not??)
That's utter nonsense. First off, you think blind people can't process information? WTF?
Second, it's not even about 'optimising for the blind' so much as simply 'using (rather than abusing) the web.' The web was designed from the start to deliver information in a neutral format so that the user-agent (browser) could then deliver that information appropriately. This may mean laying it out on a screen (of unknown dimensions and capability,) or it may mean speaking it aloud, or whatever. Proper web design is accessible to everyone. The errors that make sites inaccessible to the blind are the same errors that make them annoying and sometimes unusable to the rest of us as well.
Keep in mind that you cannot dictate layout and use html properly and you'll have no problem. Ignore that fact and you shut out a lot of people, not just the blind.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So does this mean instead of "grow your manhood in just 2 weeks with these pillZ" they're going to get "get your eyesight back in just two weeks with these sweet pillZ"?
Has anyone ever had the problem of trying to find song lyrics and being bombed with pages full of nonsence?! First time I tried with this interface I got the exact results I was wanting. So I know now that this is better for lyrics... what else would it be better for?
Flash's accessibility features are not terribly helpful. They don't adhere to any standards, and require you to run particular software (they rely on Microsoft Active Accessibility, for example) to be compatible with them.
No, before you go around spouting "STFU" at other folks, make sure you're able to back up your claims. Just becuase a company says "our stuff has accessibility features" doesn't mean they DO, or that they are useful to people who would need them.
PS: I just tried to find out more about their accessibility features, but they use Flash to explain that, and I don't have sound on this machine... kind of useless.
Given the amount of flashy sites around here it could almost prevent blindness
The w3c check is not an acurate measure on how thruly accessible the pages are
I now this because I have friends who are blind and frecuently use screen reader applications
If you really want to make sure your pages are accessible then download the trial version of Jaws for Windows wich is the defacto standard screen reader. This trial is limited to 40 minutes per session, but those 40 minutes should be enough to test your webpages.
As mentioned in posts above, make sure the content can be reaced quickly by readers.
I'll take your word for it that this is the case, I have little experience with how it works, but it seems to me that they could make another goodle, like www.google.com/blind and in this there could be nothing which would impede blind users, so simply a search box at the top right (or where ever it would be best)... surely that would be a really helpful tool to go with this and take no effort at all. But I'm no expert so I might be missing something.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
So of course the first thing I thought of:s creenshot_004.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/687/3313/1024/
Not trying to be a jerk, I really was just wondering what would come up. This is a very interesting search function.
Which raises an interesting point. What would happen if Google were to rank pages with valid html slightly higher that pages that don't validate properly?
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
When I worked for Albertsons.com, we accidently created a site that worked well for the blind, and even received some recognition for it. After the initial release of the site, and finding out how some blind people were using it, we actually had a lady talk to our develoment staff about optimizing the site even further, which we did.
It is a VERY good feeling to have, when someone that is in their 40s tell you how grateful they are for your service, since it is the first time in her life, she was able to actually shop for groceries. Adding alt text to images, that TELLS people what the image is, is a huge help. It is very simple things, that you do in HTML to make it possible. If you go in aiming to create well-formed HTML, you are about 80% there, by default.
This is very good and useful for the sight impaired and for those who like to avoid websites which are design impaired. I do however wonder how relevant this is, I could achieve similar results with an RSS reader, Firefox and/or a few GreaseMonkey Scripts. Compared to a normal webpage it would seem easier for the Reader to speak the print version so I could use the Firefox extension that forces CNN stories to open in print view. I could also subscribe to just their RSS feeds and get the stories I want on text only pages; the same is true of blogs. I'm sure there would be a way to add RSS feeds to lyric websites, and then Google could put an RSS feed search together. This seems like a better (more forward thinking solution). *disclaimer I have never used a reader nor am I a web guru this is an idea.
huh, I never thought about how a blind person my be experiencing my pages... and I've almost always used vertical bars to separate navigation links! Even still my page seems to pop up earlier in the "Accessible" search, probably because it conforms to W3C strict.
Anyone know of any resources for improving your sites for the visually impaired, or even some sort of tool that will let me experience my sites as a blind person would... it might help for some perspective.
And here I thought I was getting the best accessibility by simply ensuring compatibility across browsers. I guess there's almost always something more we can do.
Collector's Edition
A common misconception is that website accessibility only benefits blind people. Accessible, semantically-structured websites are good for many things, most notably Search Engine Optimisation and cutting down on bandwidth. How's that for financial benefit?
I am curious as to whether you use ASP volunteerily or mandatorily.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The Olympics was an Australian case. Target was not "successfully sued"; that's still pending. Southwest Airlines won a case over that issue, Access Now vs. Southwest.; their "virtual ticket counter" does not have to be handicapped-accessable. Access Now appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected the appeal. That's the only final US court decision on the subject to date.
As the court put it, it's up to Congress to change the ADA if Congress wants it to apply to the Internet.
We have no policy either way, although it's hard to get anything else installed on the servers. They are also going though a "server consolidation" effort, so there are not many boxes left to "play" with anything else.
Now if only they would do the same thing to down-list sites that are "Optimised for IE6" (or any other browser). The standards already exist, but for most content creators there is no incentive to follow them as long as the majority of their visitors are happy. Google is uniquely capable of reducing the number of visitors....
Disclaimer: I'm still learning CSS, so be gentle if I am mistaken... :)
CSS can help, but there's a reason why people use tables rather than CSS to lay out web pages: it works. There are a lot of caveats with CSS. As other posters have noted, IE doesn't follow the W3C standards, and therefore tends to display a lot of content defined with stylesheets in unexpected and not altogether wonderful ways. On the other hand, if you rewrite your CSS to work in IE, other browsers don't always work well. However, I have yet to see a browser that choked on a straight HTML table layout (granted lynx/links butcher the layout, but the content is still there).
Furthermore, consider a simple web page with a rather standard layout: a title/logo section at the top, a navigation column to the side of the main content (doesn't matter which side for this discussion), a main content section and a copyright section at the bottom. This type of layout is very simple with a table: use the <tr> tags to separate the title bar, the navigation/content and the copyright, and use the <td> tags to place the navigation menu and the main content next to each other within the middle <tr> tag. With CSS, however, you place the various divisions where you want them. Unfortunately, if your content is dynamically generated, you won't know beforehand how far down the page your copyright notice should be. While you can use the overflow property to scroll the main content while keeping the rest of the page fixed in place, this is rather ugly, and wastes even more of your page with scroll bars. For an example of what I mean <shameless plug> you can take a look at one of my web pages. I tried to use CSS exclusively for layout on this site. I've since reverted to using tables on most of my web pages, since, IMHO, it just works better for 99% of what I do.
While there probably is a way around this problem, I haven't figured it out yet, which leads to the third problem with CSS. While it's really powerful, and can do some seriously cool stuff (click here for examples), it's not nearly as easy or intuitive as straight HTML. For professional web developers, that's okay, but for a lot of people, it's more hassle than it's worth.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
But on the other hand, they do offer accessibility, and it does work. It might only work with a certain subset, and so on, but that has always been true of flash, so having it be true of flash accessibility is just not a serious issue. If you're willing to use flash, you've already made the statement that you're willing to exclude a certain percentage of users. Meanwhile, the accessibility flash provides is sufficient to fulfill the legal requirement (for those sites which are required to be accessible, that is) and again, if you're willing to use flash, you don't really give a shit about accomodating border cases anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nothing in your parent post mentioned the US specifically at all. So why are you now using that to make your case for why accessibility doesn't matter? Just because the US hasn't specifically passed legislation addressing the issue doesn't mean it isn't one.
The point I was trying to make is that it would be shortsighted and possibly very stupid for major companies to be ignoring web accessibility.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Amen! Google is AWFUL about basic web standards. You'd think they never heard of them. Considering some of the philosophies they espouse, you'd think they could devote some tiny effort towards embracing these standards.
How long would it take a good Perl developer to proxy the Google search page, and to produce validating results which look identical in all the major browsers? Probably less than a day. Of course, Google would need to take more time to optimize it, but they've had years to do this. Get with it dagnabit!
The reason is of course not that Google cannot make a page without the use of tables or the font tag, but that the pages work with even the oldest of browsers (except IE 2.0 which doesn't do tables). You can't DIV or CSS your way around that. Big sites like Google and Yahoo have always been breaking rules, either for speed (not using quotes etc.) or for backward compatability. W3C is nice but doesn't earn you money.
a slap in the face of Macromedia Flash.
For a page like the google front page that gets maybe a billion hits a day I can completely understand ignoring a few standards to cut even 100 bytes off the total size of the page. That would reduce their traffic by 100GB/day.
Just noted that when you search for Internet Explorer, it returns as 3rd:
Mozilla Firefox
Official site of the open-source browser. Includes product downloads, release notes, features overview,...
www.mozilla.com/firefox/ - 14k - Cached - Similar pages
unlike normal google.. ?
http://naerey.switch-case.org
But will this accessible search come with the SUGGEST flavor?
Actually, many modern screen readers have the capability of analyzing the HTML document and creating an alphabetical list of the links on the page that they can navigate.
Here's a list of Features and Enhancements for the latest versions of JAWS (a widely used screen reader). Reading through them will give you some idea of how screen readers operate. There's a lot more to it than you think.
Here's a clip from one of them:
HTML and the Internet
Improved Performance on the Web
With the new Internet and HTML support in JAWS 7.10, you will experience increased accuracy, improved navigation, and better text recognition when reading Web pages or other virtual documents.
Visible Focus Rectangle
When you press TAB or SHIFT+TAB to move to links and buttons in Internet Explorer and Firefox, the focus rectangle is now visible. This rectangle is useful to sighted users because it visually indicates the location of the cursor. The focus rectangle does not move when you use the arrow keys or Navigation Quick Keys to read.
Route the Virtual Cursor to the JAWS Cursor
You can now press INSERT+NUM PAD PLUS in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the Virtual Cursor to the mouse pointer. Using this command moves the Virtual Cursor to the current location of the mouse pointer and can help sighted users navigate Web pages. In addition, routing the JAWS Cursor to the Virtual Cursor (INSERT+NUM PAD MINUS) is much more accurate and moves the mouse pointer to the exact character the Virtual Cursor is located on.
Route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor
You can now press CTRL+INSERT+DELETE in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor. Using this command moves the PC Cursor (and the application focus) to the current location of the Virtual Cursor. Visually, the page will scroll so that the area containing the Virtual Cursor is visible on the screen. This command is the opposite of the Route Virtual to PC Cursor command (INSERT+DELETE).
One Setting for Controlling Page Refreshes
There is now only one setting for controlling page refreshes. Previously there were two settings, one for controlling page refreshes caused by the browser, and another for controlling refreshes caused by embedded ActiveX controls, such as Macromedia Flash. These have been consolidated into a single option for controlling both since it is often not apparent which is causing the page to refresh.
Improved Detection of Dynamic Page Updates
Previously, if script code was used on a page to control visibility without the user actually interacting with the page, JAWS would not detect the page update and would either show content that was not really there or not show content which was made visible. This should no longer occur.
Enhanced Screen Tracking
The screen no longer scrolls up or down erratically while you are using the Say All command or navigating by other means. The screen only moves when the content about to be read is not visible.
Document Presentation Mode Line Length
You can now define how long a single line will be when viewing an HTML page in Document Presentation Mode. This can help you read lengthy tables easier because all the content from each row in the table can fit on a single line. The increased line length stops JAWS from rendering rows across multiple lines. When you exit Document Presentation Mode, JAWS will render the page using the normal maximum line length.
The default line length in Document Presentation Mode is 400 characters, which is enough to fit most table rows on one line. To change the line length, open the Utilities menu and choose Configuration Manager. Then, open the Set Options menu and choose HTML Options. Enter a new line length in the Document Presentation Mode Maximum Line Length edit box located on the Text tab.
But to be fair, Google Accessible doesn't find itself either: http://blog.outer-court.com/accessible/?q=google (don't even try 'search engine'...)
**TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.
web accessibility is making your website accessible to all kind of users, disabled or not, regardless of what browser they are using. I will emphasize that accessibility is for all, not for a select group of persons. Because if this is how it is treated then it becomes burdensome for designers/developers. Imagine designing only for a selected audience (nothing wrong with that if that is your purpose) then your site will be have limited use. Should designers ask for a higher fee because they know accessibility? NO. But they can be given preference when a company is selecting their web designer. Remember that accessibility can directly mean higher sales because more people can access their site and there is a higher percentage of buying something if you can see/ access it (obviously!) Having laws to make developers comply is a push approach. A pull approach means having the designers comply because there are benefits. When people know that there are business benefits because of accessibility then they will comply, with or without laws. Thanks, Rey Mendoza
Mod up!
Get a copy of JAWS, put on a blindfold and try to find your way around; That's what I do.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Yep, that's pretty much it!
Pitty they still need to support Netscape 4, SomeWierdWebBrowserYou'veNeverHeardOfBefore and friends.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
http://www.google.com/xhtml
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
http://www.slackcrew.com/pages/forum/listDiscussio n.php?rootId=11989
Have you ever actually looked at Google's code? If they were that concerned about bandwidth, there's plenty of other things they could do to save bandwidth while still conforming to spec. Google's invalid code seems to be caused by ignorance or apathy, not efficiency.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
That's because you don't need to. Using CSS doesn't make your page stop working with older browsers, it was specifically designed to be backwards compatible. For example, using <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> instead of body {background: #fff} is unnecessary in browsers as old as Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator 4, and browsers older than that get the default background colour, which is usually white anyway. Plus you can factor out CSS into an external stylesheet which is far more efficient.
How much money do you think Google earns from searchers using vintage browsers who would use a different search engine if the page was slightly uglier?
Plus, as I mentioned in another comment, Tesco earned £13m per annum from accessibility improvements to their website, so blanket statements like that are simply false anyway.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It's a waste of time and less user-friendly to try maintaining two versions. Accessibility improvements generally improve the experience for normal visitors as well. I guess you're assuming that an accessible design has to be boring and plain, but this isn't the case, you can have normal-looking designs that degrade gracefully so that they are still accessible.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Sorry for not stating the obvious before, but the use of these "illegal" tags is exactly to work around the flaws of "graceful degrading". These guys want their home page to look exactly alike in differert browsers, and not just simply degrade to something useful but not looking the way it is supposed to. Graceful degrading is from a technical point of view. Using bad tags to make it look the same is the marketing approach. For instance, I could use css to give a font a certain color, or the font tag. Both texts will render in old browsers, only the second with the color the marketing department ways. The rest is acedemical.
You use tags to mark the beginning and ends of elements. That is all you can possibly do with them. You are talking about element types, not tags.
Perhaps, but why? Are you saying that it actually makes them money to have Netscape 3 users see a white background instead of a light grey background?
Marketing isn't an end in itself. The objective is to make money.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
So the question is: how many web designers will wake up and smell the alt text?
Whatever.
>Marketing isn't an end in itself. The objective is to make money. You stole my argument. W3C isn't a goal in itself. Turning the argument around doesn't fix that. If so, please give a list of browsers that fail to render the tabled and fonted Google page otherwise.
Well, if you don't like the simple answer you can always put your eyes out!
No, but it has beneficial consequences. For example:
What beneficial consequences does making the design identical for Netscape 3 users have?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Running their search interface through the Ruby Accessibility Analysis Kit (http://peterkrantz.com/bacc/) yields more errors:
missing language info, missing headings, using markup not compatible with semantics.
Standards Schmandards
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
But regarding your question, the answer, again, is: money.
Take any percentage of users with "old browsers" over the years, and against that you can put an audience break point where your neglectance or scaring away of those people costs more than serving them earns.
Although I like using the newest technologies and be on the frontier, commercially this is often a bad idea and one needs, on purpose, NOT be using the newest or for technology evangelists correct technologies, but those which are most mainstream. Like it or not, being two steps behind in browser land is best for sites with mass public. If you make a web site for the mass public, don't be an technology evangelist on the client side. It costs you.
I'm not saying I like this, or I didn't think of your points. As a developer, I don't like it. As a professional however, it is a fact I can't ignore for certain sites.
I see too many evangelists (and I'm paradoxically one of them if you look at my site only), for instance making sites requiring at least screens of 1024 pixels in width, and if you got 800x600 (last year >15%, I guess now 10%), you "should upgrade". One could argue about that, the point is shareholders won't, page & banner views and clicks don't lie, and profit is highest when they are not ignored. The summarize your question's answer again: money.
I'm a little late on the draw, here, a day behind, but I think I know how you could do the design in your example with CSS without a problem. I'm guessing from the way you write that you were thinking to use CSS positioning? There are easier ways, that work pretty much cross browser (Netscap 6 seeming to always be the odd man out, but if you can afford to set that one aside, you're gold.)
Are you on the css-discuss list? They can be pretty snarky, but they're also helpful.
I'll grant you your last point, though; I've been doing CSS for more than 6 years now and am just now truely getting the hang of it and getting around some of my early sticking points.
I'm a she-slashdotter... but I make up for it by living with my folks.
I agree with what you are saying, but realize the amount of trust that we are given Google. I for one trust their "Don't be evil" motto, but it would be a breach of public faith to start meddling with search results too much.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.