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Google Logo Changes Again, Hinting RT Search?

siliconbits writes "The Google homepage is sporting a new logo that changes color as you type, and it is likely a big hint as to what the company will announce at its search event on Wednesday. When you arrive on the search giant homepage today, you will be greeted with a gray Google doodle."

29 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. google.co.uk by calzakk · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.google.com/ isn't working for me, but http://www.google.co.uk/ is.

  2. Re:Interesting by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Doodles have never been on the HTTPS page since it launched, so no surprise there.

  3. Re:difference? by calzakk · · Score: 3, Informative

    Are you serious? On one hand you've got coloured balls that repel from the mouse, on the other hand you've got grey letters that are coloured when you press keys. To me that's a big difference. And it's actually pretty cool too, and even better is that there's no Flash :)

  4. Re:Google has lost it... by Albanach · · Score: 5, Informative

    It would also be nice if the people within Google who realise that Google is used for serious work by people were still in charge...

    And a colour changing logo affects your work day in what way? You realise no one at Google forced you to spend the afternoon playing pacman.

    You can still type in a query, click search and get your results.

    To be honest, I usually miss out on the doodles because it's so much quicker in Firefox to hit Ctrl K then type your query.

  5. Re:Yesterday too by Rhaban · · Score: 2, Informative

    was not canvas: absolute-positionned divs with round corners.

  6. Re:Google has lost it... by El+Torico · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's used by a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Maybe it's time for "Google Lite".

    --
    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
  7. Google Don't Like Opera by Mike+Mentalist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is there a good reason why these new Google toys don't work in Opera by default? Neither the background image option or that swirling ball trick from the other day worked in Opera until you set it in the options for Opera to mask itself as IE or Firefox - and now the same thing is true for this latest gimmick.

    --
    I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
  8. Re:Google has lost it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually I think it's you who has lost it. Google Search is a commodity, not something you have an inherent right to. Furthermore, these stunts of Google's are the type of thing MBAs shy away from; only in an organization where developers have a lot of free reign is this ever common.

  9. Re:Google has lost it... by boxwood · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you could just use the search bar in firefox, or type your queries directly into the url bar in chrome.

    really, who goes to the google front page anymore, other than to check on some interesting doodle?

  10. Re:Yesterday too by xded · · Score: 5, Informative

    was not canvas: absolute-positionned divs with round corners.

    Correct. CSS3 feature, animated with ordinary Javascript.

  11. Re:Google has lost it... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Informative

    You do realize that Google Doodles are a tradition at Google dating back to 2000? They archive all of the doodles here: http://www.google.com/logos/

    If you are instead talking about Google's upcoming Realtime Search, then I don't think this falls under a "private play pen" item but an attempt to make a new search tool that people might find useful. If Google stops innovating and rests on their laurels, they risk another company overtaking them. Sure, not everything they do might succeed or be useful to the vast majority of people, but they try many different things and many of those things wind up working out.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  12. Re:When I type by Myopic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Results, or suggestions? I don't see results when I do it.

  13. Streaming Search Vid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was able to see the streaming search yesterday for some reason... Luckily, I recorded it. If you want to see it, it's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOizC3ZPsFI

  14. Re:Google has lost it... by jac89 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You could select a custom background on google and set it to white. Or use the https google. Both of these would effectively hide all doodles.

  15. That's just great! by jenningsthecat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yet another bit of distracting, eye-candy crap that uses JavaScript to tart up my monitor like a whore on Saturday night. I get that Google is becoming EVIL despite their stated intentions to the contrary, but do they have to be ugly and bloated too?

    A quote from the TV series 'Life': "Its like Hello Kitty ate the Disney Channel and threw it up on that half of the room."

    This trend of 'cute for cuteness sake' seems to be taking over the whole computing industry. I really wish developers, and
    Google specifically, would spend more effort on functionality and usability and less effort on putting on their damned makeup.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  16. Re:Google has lost it... by jonescb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To be fair, the pacman game would autostart after like 30 seconds and it would default to having sound on. So if you open up Google in another tab like I usually do you were forced to listen to the pacman game until you closed the tab or muted it. And yesterday's ball doodle was fairly jarring to look at because as soon as you opened the page the balls were flying all over the place. It would have been nicer if they started at their rest position spelling out Google and would only fly around when you use the mouse. But instead they started out in motion.

  17. Phrenology? by Aceticon · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is reading Google's intentions from the Google logo the new Phrenology or would it be more akin to practices of divination such as reading the future from tea-leaves or the entrails of recently slaughtered goats?

    1. Re:Phrenology? by digitalhermit · · Score: 3, Funny

      I understand your skepticism. However, you must believe in the interconnectedness of things to understand why this works.

      Reality is one vast machine. All actions are interconnected like gears in an elaborate clock. Looking at ants moving grains of sand can help divine the motions of the stock market. A woman dresses up one day determines (or is a consequence of) her horse winning a race at Belmont. The random drip of water flowing through a cave imprints "Rita Hayworth is a goddess" on the cave wall.

      And a Google marketing rep, privy to the details of the announcement, wears a mongoose boa one day. The front-page coders, not privy to this information, think it looks clownlike. A man in a Chewbacca costume robs a liquor store. A blind ferret bites the toe of an American tourist in Sydney. Unable to finish the appropriate Javascript version of Fallout 4, the coders throw in some code from their existing type-ahead library.

      This is how we know.

  18. who cares by Pegasus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As an Opera user I haven't been on google front page for years - I just use g in url bar to search for whatever I'm searching for

    1. Re:who cares by HeckRuler · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh man! Opera doesn't support cookies? No wonder it sucks.

  19. Checking Browser Capability for Graceful Fallback by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is there a good reason why these new Google toys don't work in Opera by default? Neither the background image option or that swirling ball trick from the other day worked in Opera until you set it in the options for Opera to mask itself as IE or Firefox - and now the same thing is true for this latest gimmick.

    I don't know for sure (not a Google insider) but I would guess that they are using a wrapper script or something that has a hard coded list of support browser by browser. Whatever version of Opera you are using is probably incorrectly identified as not having these HTML5 feature(s) supported. Or perhaps it only gives you some of the functionality so they make the executive decision to just disable it entirely. I just finished reading HTML5 Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim of Google and he pushes heavily for the use of modernizr to check browser capabilities. I've never known Modernizr to be wrong though. Whatever the case, it appears Google is simply not promising their doodle will work in Opera ... could be that they made a checking script for the Pac-Man doodle and just kept carrying it over. Did Opera work for that?

    Now that I think about it, this is a high traffic page so they probably wrote their own browser checking wrapper for graceful fallback instead of pushing all of a javascript library down to each client. They are probably using a broad brush to balance bandwidth with audience and you're one of the unfortunate victims.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  20. Re:Google has lost it... by dswensen · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know, I think you'll recover from the trauma eventually.

  21. Wut wut? by HeckRuler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Noticeable LAG! On a free search engine? This is UNACCEPTABLE! Drag out the heretics, lash them to the canvas, and burn them eternally! Let not their javascript soil your pure nature. Cast out their algorithms from your cache, and listen not unto their rhetoric for their lips ever spew lies!
    There shall be a Reckoning for this lag!

  22. Re:Google home page? by Coolfish · · Score: 4, Funny

    my parents use the search bar to search for google.com (with the .com, mind you), and then use the google home page to search. I wish I was kidding :(

  23. Re:Google has lost it... by AdamTrace · · Score: 2, Informative

    Holy crap. Control K. And here I was using my mouse like a sucker. Thank you!

  24. Re:difference? by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's hard to ignore that? It's not like it significantly increases load times or changes, well, anything.

    If you just want results, why didn't you just type your query into the search box that's on every modern browser? You get to ignore the entire homepage!

    It's like you're just bitching because you can. Seriously... get over yourself.

  25. Re:ehh by CarpetShark · · Score: 2, Funny

    It just fills in up to 6 typed characters. you can type 6 periods (.) and still get it all filled it.

    What it is leading to after that is anyones guess.

    Google used to limit you to 10 keywords per search. Since they've taken over youtube though, they're short on bandwidth. So, they're trimming that to maximum search length to six characters, as of friday.

  26. Google Instant is here by nmx · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not turned on for everyone yet. But you can go here to force it on.

    --
    "Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
  27. Re:Ugh, real-time search by SnowDog74 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It appears that you can toggle instant off and just use regular search.