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.

About Face!

[dolo666]

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 [slashdot.org], much like the over-play curse afforded to successful musicians.

WHO CARES

[Anonymous Coward]

NO ONE!

Very minimalist

[winkydink]

A great example of, "less is more". No, not pagers.

Re:About Face!

[lamz]

What I think is the best feature of Google is that they cater to their end-user, not their financial backers.

What I like best about Google is that they realize that taking care of their end-users is the best way to satisfy their financial backers.

Tricky New Look

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:About Face!

[rokzy]

exactly, there are so many retards in charge of businesses today that can't understand the simple concept that STEP 3. ???? IS NOT "PISSING OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS"

Re:This is news?

[Hemos]

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.

Its about usability

[duffbeer703]

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.

The ads are less discernible

[unborn]

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.

Re:New google fizzles

[jellomizer]

kaw-pow, pizazz! It doesn't reach out and grab you and scream in your face - read this X-TREME

Like Poochie The Talking dog.
And you know how successful he was.
Sorry that was the first thing that came in my mind. That and the Danimals Commercial where they introduced a new character of a Crocodile with sun glasses, which we never have seen from since.

In seriousness the stuff has a wow factor which makes you use the page 2 or 3 times until the wow ends off and you go back to work using google because it goes straight to the point without feeling like they are trying to open you wallet on every click.

Re:I don't like it

[TwistedGreen]

But they changed more than the interface.

Doing a quick test search, I've noticed that it's so much more responsive. They did tweake the interface, but they also optimized download time. Think of how many searches are done every minute. Even a small size reduction can quickly add up!

Re:minor display change is slashdot fodder?

[WWWWolf]

Minimal importance? Sure. People change web site designs all the time.

But, you know, zillions of people probably went "What the hell is THAT? Oh. New page layout." today. It's just that certain web sites have to stay the same, because if there's something new, people get scared.

I expect a lot of people calling tech support: "I think some hacker got to my computer. Google looks different now!"

Of course, majority will probably realize Google is just another web site, but...

Re:high key ads

[Plutor]

Sure, they look like search results, but since they're in the same place as before, my eyes have been trained to totally ignore anything on the right side of the Google Results page. Even though they're not green (or whatever) anymore, I find it hard to believe that anyone who surfs the web more than 10 minutes a week would consider those to be "intrusive ads".

I don't like it

[Saint Stephen]

(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.

Simple Can Be Better

[mikesmind]

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.

Re:Fatal Error

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it doesn't pay to write "proper" (X)HTML.

It does, but I guess Google are in the very exclusive club of "big enough to warrant all major browsers ensuring that they work with that website".

I wonder if they skipped the doctype tag because it's relatively pointless for this level of basic HTML

The doctype declaration (it's not a tag) indicates that the document conforms to a certain specification. Google not complying with any known HTML specification, it's arguably the correct thing to do to leave it off. Leaving it off means that browsers go into "quirks mode", whereby they deviate from the HTML and CSS specifications in an attempt to work around author mistakes.

and wasn't worth the bandwith demands to include it.

If Google were worried about bandwidth, they'd get rid of cruft like bgcolor=#ffffff and move the CSS into an external stylesheet. Assuming they employ front-end coders that know what they are doing of course (just because they are clueful on the back-end, it doesn't mean they are clueful on the front-end).

Re:Definition

[Thiago Ize]

I would have prefered something less commercial like dict.org

Re:New google fizzles

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post reminds me of Excite's Xtreme website, you know, where you could uselessly do web searches in 3D?

"Designed for the AWESOME POWER of the Pentium 2..."

Uh, no...

[alphapartic1e]

I, for one, don't like the new Google interface.

<rant>

The front page will take a bit getting used to (now w/o the tabs) (see: Google cache of Google [64.233.167.104]). 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 [google.com].)

</rant>

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.

Good, now clean up the search results

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Fatal Error

[MCZapf]

The thing is, Google's pages probably render correctly with more browsers than any other site. It makes me wonder if wrestling XHTML and broken CSS implimentations is even worth the trouble.

Re:Fatal Error

[hooverbag]

If Google were worried about bandwidth, they'd get rid of cruft like bgcolor=#ffffff and move the CSS into an external stylesheet.

It may be that using the extra bandwidth is faster or more efficient than the extra http request for the external stylesheet.

Fake hits

[MagerValp]

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.

Re:About Face!

[Kanon]

Business today seems to be all about locking in your customers so even if you piss them off they can't go anywhere else.

Google lock in their users by providing a good service. Bunch of hippies :)

Re:About Face!

[Chordonblue]

That's just it, Google manages to satisfy everyone they deal with:

- People who use the searching tools for free
- Advertisers who want targets ads
- Affiliates that carry the ads

It's a totally amazing business model that no one else has quite gotten right. I don't regret a dime we have spent with Google and their services as we have seen it returned to us 100-fold.

Don't be concerned until...

[Chordonblue]

...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.

Doing their part for the net community...

[TEMMiNK]

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....

Re:Its about usability

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN! I was getting so sick of searching something, then wanting to search groups but accidentally clicking the big GOOGLE logo and going back to the front page with no search. They moved the links to the side instead of underneath the logo, which is great.

Can't say anything bad about google?

[naoiseo]

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 [webmasterworld.com] - personal experience statement

Re:Generally so, but not for /,

[next1]

from the linked article HTML is broken, not google :

HTML is supposed to be superior? A way to do nice formatting and "mark up" of text and images for browsers right?

no, that's not right. mark up yes, nice formatting no. the two terms themselves are conflicting.

and the actual solution to the author's example test is to do it with css - that's what it's for.
we know it won't work in ns 3 on win 95, that's why css was introduced; to address these formatting issues.

and btw, the html on the page itself is invalid!

Re:Fatal Error

[Lehk228]

Right off the bat without much customization they could shrink their logo by 7% by going to PNG instead of GIF using the exact same palette, drop it down to a 115 color pallete (almost unchanged visually, slight granularity added to shadow) and i can cut the file by 40%

Re:Generally so, but not for /,

[Anonymous Coward]

Most idiotic thing I've read in weeks.

"You must do this task and support an old web browser that only understands ancient sucky standards. You can't do it using sucky HTML? Then all HTML is sucky! And CSS too!"

Logic is definitely not this person's strong point.

Re:high key ads

[jwinter1]

And in doing so you discourage businesses who place targeted, low-key text ads.

Re:high key ads

[frankie]

you discourage businesses who place targeted, low-key text ads.

Correction: scam artists who place low-key text ads for rip-off work-from-home schemes on overly common keywords. Seriously, take a look at those sponsored links. If the FTC's enforcement office set up a full-time position prosecuting people who run keyword adverts for illegal scams, it would quickly become a profit center.

Re:About Face!

[nelsonal]

I think Jeep implies that you might at least consider taking your 4wd vehicle off the road while SUV implies that it will be a kid/grocery hauler.