Wired Reports on 'Googlemania' 261
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "As a tie-in with its March 2004 cover story on the search phenomenon that is Google, Wired has posted its Complete Guide to Googlemania. Written before Google delayed its IPO earlier this month, the feature nevertheless offers a series of interesting articles focused on the search engine giant. Particularly interesting sections include Googlemaniacs (in which 'superusers' like Matt Groening and Garry Trudeau discuss how they use Google on a daily basis), a look at how blog comment spammers have taken advantage of Google's PageRank system, and a gallery of hypothetical interface redesigns by a group of artists and graphic designers."
Microsoft versus Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
So? That doesn't mean they'll kill Google. What will kill Google is if MS's search engine is better. I don't see that happening for a couple of iterations.
"If Google really was offered $10 billion by Microsoft and turned it down, then they were stupid."
10 billion? With a b, billion? Why on Earth would Microsoft spend half of their money on a search engine?
Guess that's another one to submit to Snopes.com.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
sometimes being better doesn't mean anything. Was IE better than Netscape during the browser war? or was it just because MS preinstalled IE in all Windows, and Windows happens to be one of the most used OS?
and nowadays, Opera, Mozilla etc must be better than IE? but are they taking over IE's market share?
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, IE was better than Netscape. It wasn't at first. It was lacking in many ways, and as a result, people flocked towards Netscape. When version 4 came out of both apps, Microsoft had gotten their act together, and suddenly Netscape wasn't such an interesting browser anymore. They just weren't doing enough to make their app better.
Microsoft didn't win because IE was preinstalled, it won because it was a better browser. If what you were saying was true, then Netscape would never have had half the marketshare.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong (and right). IE won because it was a better browser. But the only reason it was better was that it was preinstalled. Featurewise, both browsers were about equal... but IE was already there, and it was good enough, so there was no reason to download Netscape.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong. IE 4+ didn't crash when you looked at it the wrong way. They couldn't even get Netscape to be stable while running in Linux, can't blame Windows for that.
There's a reason the term "Nutscrape" became quite prevalent in the net culture.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Funny)
You're right... IE 4 didn't just crash, it exploded spectacularly, and took down your whole desktop to boot.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:2)
Heh. Perhaps. (Way to dodge my "wasn't stable in Linux" comment.) That's still far less frequent than what happened with NS.
Quickly, Avert Your Eyes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong. Many variants of IE 4 and 5 were AMAZINGLY unstable. I remember being brought to tears by the mind-numbingly frequent crashes of IE on my otherwise-stable computer. It really wasn't until a few service packs into 5 that they started to get their act together.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Informative)
1) They pre-installed the browser with the OS.
2) They fucked around with browser implementation standards.
IE wasn't better. Microsoft included their own tags and "VB script" that would make it's browser do things that Netscape couldn't.
When web site developers foolishly started using these proprietary tags, web site viewers realized that half the sites they were going to didn't work "properly" in Netscape, and Netscape lost marketshare.
Netscape didn't get the nickname "Nutscrape" from users who know what they were talking about, it got the name from people who preferred the glitz and galmour of all the cool, new, RFC breaking features that IE provided.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Bwahaha. Does 'document.layers' mean anything to you? Netscape was a standards nightmare, and tried just as fervently as Internet Explorer to shove its proprietary tags and JavaScript down your throat. IE at version 4 was decent, and IE at version 5 (released in early 1999, I believe) was so much better than Netscape.
Initially, Netscape was great. Indeed, it was pretty much the only useable option for awhile in the mid-90s. But they got complacent, and then they just got terrible. There was a reason the Mozilla folks decided to completely rewrite the core of the browser for Netscape 6. Yes, IE's dominance of the browser market was accelerated by the fact that the browser shipped as the operating system's default, but it was so much better that it's victory was inevitable.
History repeats itself. No sooner than IE is declared the victor in this latest browser war, its development grows stagnant. The trouble this time is that Netscape never had an operating system Monopoly against which to leverage itself.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course Microsoft would eventually kill them off--all they had to do was sell windows and bundle the competing application to do it.
This is exactly what MS will continue doing until sanity is restored in the market--by force of law if necessary. They will simply scan the horizon for emerging technologies, clone them, claim to be "an innovator, enhancing the user's experience" and that will be that.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Economics says that $10 billion is what Google's worth (in Microsoft's perception) or, more likely, since Google rejected the offer, $10 billion is less than what they believe Google's value to be. That's why.
It doesn't matter if it's half their money or all of their money, if Microsoft assesses a certain value to a company, they'll be willing to make the corresponding offer. (They've done so before).
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:3, Informative)
OOooh yes it does, especially in a publically held company in the tech market. This move wouldn't be allowed unless there were assurances that the 10 billion dollars in assets could be quickly turned into 20 billion.
It's a lot easier to take risks like that with tens of millions of dollars, not billions.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:4, Informative)
Additionally, there don't even necessarily need to be any assurances about the payoffs. All that matters is the NPV (including factors such as volatility, discount rates, etc.) is positive. It doesn't matter if they pay $10 billion now and the $20 billion payoff comes 10 years down the road, if the present value of that $20 billion 10 years from now is $10 billion and one penny then (technically) it's a good investment.
The fact that the payoff is 10 years from now does not matter at all to the investor because he/she can always sell it for what it's worth today in the free market (though it is almost always -- excluding deflation -- true that a $20 bn payoff tomorrow will be worth more than a $20 bn payoff in 10 years).
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I, for one, hope that Google stays the way it is. Simple, fast, powerful, and reasonably free.
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:3, Funny)
"That search engine was unreasonably free, I mean It was over 100x more free than other free search engines"
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Insightful)
hell, the antivirus industry is almost completely their fault anyway...
MICROSOFT GIVETH, MICROSOFT TAKETH AWAY...
Re:Microsoft versus Google (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:5, Interesting)
All four of the artists that came up with proposals for Google redisigns totally missed that concept. One wants Google to provide needless information nobody asked for, one wants to remind people of conspiracy theories on every visit, one's trying to bring color onto a page that you don't usually spend time admiring, and one's suggesting brand extentions that'd end up cheapening the original Google brand.
Google's power is in its function. Needless art on the homepage just distracts from that... There's a reason why artists are only allowed to work with the Google Doodle on rare occasions and they're not welcome to mess with the rest of the home page.
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way I could possibly think of making google any better would be to get rid of that stupid googlebar advertisment they've been sticking on the front page. Just an input box and search results, thank you so much.
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:3)
Well that's exactly what you get when you install googlebar: An input box, and nothing else.
I'm not all that impressed with his work (Score:4, Insightful)
First, Mr. Davis' design wastes a good chunk of my web browser's viewable area -- the whole thing is letterboxed.
Next, I have to wait for this little animation to go by when I start looking at the page.
I have my browser font sizes jacked up to be easily readable when sitting back from my monitor, as I am now. Works in all the sites I use -- but Mr. Davis' site has near-unreadable narrow-piped fonts with similar, dark colors all antialiased and stuck in a static small size.
One of his panes has a scrollbar. I figured it out because I use xterm, and have seen arrowless scrollbars before. Except Mr. Davis didn't even outline his scrollbar, or do anything to indicate that the thing *was* a scrollbar. There's just this big rectangle of gray that you can grab and drag.
Mr. Davis uses rollover highlighting. I think my opinion of rollover highlighting can be nicely summed up by analysis of an HCI person a ways back -- you use rollover highlighting when your interface is so unintutive that users aren't sure what to click on, and must wave the mouse over the interface to be enlightened. Rollovers became popular shortly after imagemaps did, when people had artsy but highly unusable designs containing a big image where it was unclear what was a link.
I cannot select and copy and paste text on Mr. Davis' site.
Mr. Davis chooses to force me to use visual transitions. When I click on anything on his site, I frequently have to wade for a fade transition to complete before I can read the next page. Fade transitions are no longer novel or interesting to users, and slow down anyone trying to navigate the site.
I see few things on praystation.com that could not have been done much better with a more conventional webpage.
Now, I will admit that many of the flaws in praystation.com are endemic among Flash designers, and indulged in by many others. However, that doesn't change the fact that I really don't like interacting with the praystation.com site, and I really *do* like using Google.
Please read this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a service that offers what customers want. period. There's no need to add bullshit or anything else that would increase costs and subsequently prices. You don't need a Google cam, email, calendar, masterbation tracker, or whatever
The Cell phone people need to hear this
Would that be... (Score:3, Funny)
They were artists, not search engine designers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a search engine, not a museum. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously google has become a huge success and that success is most likely due to it's performance (results and speed, fraud-busting, etc.), but I'm not sure how the "general populace" would feel about any visual enhancements or additional features. Perhaps the average user might be intimidated by all sorts of other bizarre features, or maybe they would appreciate them because (as the author Michael Chabon said) they'd get the opportunity to catch new links to potentially interesting information (or maybe the map might save them a trip to mapquest, or something).
I think google is fine and I use it and everything, but I did think the map feature was interesting (of course, not for a standard search, but perhaps as a special search). I'm sure that there are some other features that would be popular with the computer users who aren't all business either.
I mean, there's a reason why so many people go to huge portals like cruel.com [slashdot.org] or joke sites like the Spark [slashdot.org], because they're looking for a distraction, and some of these "enhancements" would provide just that.
user experience design is supposed to be practical (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, good user experience design is supposed to place practicality above bells and whistles. The problem is that so many UE experts are really designer/artists and not really UE experts.
Having said that, engineers aren't usually the best UE designers either, because what is practical to an engineer is often inscrutable to a normal user. Imagine a color chooser box that took hex values for R G and B color components. Very handy for a developer but awful for a user. You see bad design all the time from engineers *and* (graphic) designers.
Just a remark about infinity... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The number Google is finite, but it's so large that it is infinite for all practical purposes."
Even a Googleplex is as far away from infinity as is the number 1. Few people really get infinity...even artists. Practical purposes maybe, but close to infinity? Infinity isn't a number at all. It is a symbol for continuousness.
+1
Re:Just a remark about infinity... (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally think that the artist understood what he was saying pretty well. Two two are different, but the common use of the term infinity means "a lot", just like the common (if rare) use of "a googol".
Googlemania (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Googlemania (Score:2, Interesting)
All that companys that use stupid scripts to generate content should be detected by google and removed.
I wonder why they did not find an algorythm/AI-logic that detect such link-farms.
Re:Googlemania (Score:5, Insightful)
Google seems to have a strict policy on altering results provided by the algorithm, which I think is a wonderful policy and shouldn't be changed without much consideration.
Interesting Redesigns (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Redesigns (Score:3, Interesting)
Form should follow function though, I agree.
Googlemania: The Class (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Googlemania: The Class (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's hoping that's a lab class.
I, for one... (Score:5, Funny)
What? (Score:5, Funny)
- Lloyd Grove
Any other Google out there that I am not aware of?
All I have to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Nathan
Re:All I have to say (Score:2, Funny)
All four proposed redesigns are lame! (Score:5, Interesting)
The geographic location stuff might be of marginal utility occasionally, but I'd just want an extra link to click on near the result if I wanted that info.
Re:All four proposed redesigns are lame! (Score:5, Funny)
And I love the way that "Jenny Holzer" would redesign the page... I'm sure Google would be excited about expressing her personal political views right on the front page. How did that mess even make it into the Wired article?
I think that the main page should have a Flash game where you get to hit republicans on the head with a big hammer. I think that users would really like that.
-- Jenny Holzer, "Artist"
Ha.
Re:All four proposed redesigns are lame! (Score:4, Funny)
It's actually a very good idea for the post-IPO Google. Alternate Jenny's idea with its opposite number: Republicans get a Flash game where they get to beat up homosexuals, liberals and non-Christians. The resulting controversy gets mentioned in every news story for several days. Traffic spikes and investors bid up the stock price. Of course, it has nothing to do with search results but that's business.
Artist or "artist" ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't remember, so help me out here, people: is "artist" (with quote marks) what you get to call yourself when you waste four years at college on an Art History degree and end up thoroughly unemployed (see also "artsy-fartsy") or is "artist" just an all-purpose label for unattractive whiners who spoil every opportunity to do something meaningful by calling lame political commentary "art" (with quotes) thereby ensuring that the product of one's life is measured in the number of coffee refills served while working at the doughnut shop rather than creating something of beauty or meaning?
I can never remember which is which, but then again it's a fine distinction.
Re:All four proposed redesigns are lame! (Score:4, Informative)
Jenny Holzer, "Artist"
Actually, Jenny Holzer is an excellent artist, regardless of your/her political leaning. Most people don't get the full effect of her work since her installations typically don't photograph well. Speaking from experience, her work is really quite powerful in person.
Of course, the most famous phrase she has used in her work is appropriate to mention here: "Protect Me from What I Want [guggenheim.org]" (for bonus points, note the location of the sign).
Re:All four proposed redesigns are lame! (Score:2)
Design 1: Way too cluttered to be useful. I like the colour scheme and style. Maybe they could take the original and apply the style. Score 2.5/5
Design 2: Why the f*ck do you want to see conspiracy theories when you are looking for recipes or tv show details? Anyway, all she did was cut and paste a declassified document onto the current page. Score: 0/5
Design 3: This actually looks decent, although I really don't see the reason for putting a typewriter and some design that looks as if it was
Are we seeing a pattern here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just curious. It reminds me of a management cycle that Scott Adams wrote about once. "We need to decentralize to be more efficient!" Then, a few months later "We need to centralize in order to focus on our coure strengths". Then, repeat. heh.
im not impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
Google vs. Gates (Score:5, Interesting)
"Microsoft looks at Google and sees its own past, full of promise."
Dissapointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Mail is an interesting subject, and it did not say anything on how it was going to attract users. MailRank algorithm anyone? If there are 99% accuracy spam filters, ala the recent slashsdot article, Google better have them. They built a better search engine and they came. If they build a better spam filter, even more will come.
Microsoft is providing a fact search thingy in Longhorn. I hope Google has one soon, or else they will not survive. (As a student, I think the fact search thing will be invaluable, and is practically worth buying Longhorn.)
I hope Google can survive, but Microsoft is here, and Bill has not lost. Yet.
Re:Dissapointing (Score:2)
True. And there are areas where they have not won. Take the Xbox, for example. They really haven't "won" by any definition of the term, but they haven't lost either. Google may have to put up with an incrementally better search engine every year from Microsoft, but as of yet, I've never been impressed with MSN. Or any of the others for that matter.
When I visit a web site to search, I go to do just that. I don't go to be
Re:Dissapointing (Score:4, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see how Google and Microsoft handle the impending collision of egos as Microsoft will inevitably try to capture or dislodge Google.
I use google, but I'm more than a little cautious about their privacy policies. The fact search that you mention would be an amazing enhancement to google, so that I wouldn't have to scour through some dozens of online stores before I can get to some actual information. I hope it comes soon.
As far as my projected future of google, they're going to go public someday (because they will become very very rich), and then they'll turn into every other corporation in America, losing their edge for conservatism and becoming too big for anybody's good (or are they already too big?)
Superusers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Superusers? (Score:5, Funny)
1. Go to the Google home page.
2. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right...
Blog spammers for Elron (Score:5, Interesting)
Great Picture, though. (Score:2)
The article [wired.com] it's in is mediocre, but that's a gem.
Can Google ever IPO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, the owners of Google seem content with the profit that their company is making, and are not efforting to squeeze every possible penny out of their site. The Google homepage has to be the most seen single page on the Internet, yet they have refrained from putting a banner ad on it.
A public company doesn't have that luxury. It has a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as posible for the sake of its minority shareholders. They'll feel pressure to put ads where there were no ads before, and to curtail research projects that aren't going anywhere profitable in the near future.
In short, could the IPO kill Google-as-we-know-it?
Google's IPO will be the end (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I do think that the Google IPO will be the beginning of the end for Google -- that within a few years, Google will start to suck.
First, Google will IPO for a lot of money. The management will be expected to drive up company value even *more*. It will be a hard task, and I suspect t
You Fail It (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose it's inevitable. It's hard to justify your design competence to the average joe or PHB with less rather than more. I'm sure a lot of people if questioned would look at Google right now and think "anybody could design that."
The master does little, the fool much (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, how few websites have caught on to the simplicity motif and designed their site around it?
Thank god artists don't design our web interfaces (Score:5, Informative)
First off, the first guy's "idea" is nothing but a rip-off of this [google.com] contest winning [google.com]idea.
The others are nothing but blatant political posturing.
Scott
I like Google gfx (Score:3, Interesting)
The linked stuff is just gfx artists masturbation; looks cool, but they're just exacerbating the business they're trained in.
It's kind of funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google
_________________________________
Google Search / I'm Feeling Lucky
I mean, we could lighten the interface from graphics so that it loads quickly...
Re:It's kind of funny... (Score:2)
You could always use Opera and just turn graphics off. I did that on a crappy dialup connection once. Without graphics, the net behaves almost like it does with broadband.
Re:It's kind of funny... (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is more than just Google (Score:5, Insightful)
So in some sense, Google in many people's minds is more than just the search engine. People think of Google almost the way they think of the Internet itself. People don't say "...you can search the net for that...", they say "...you can Google for that...".
Google is where AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and many others want to be. And it's (so far) conducting itself with grace, intelligence, integrity, and style. I wish it well.
A "My Mom" story (Score:2)
IPO not necessarily delayed (Score:4, Informative)
New Google trick!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:New Google trick!!! (Score:2)
Re:New Google trick!!! (Score:2)
Re:New Google trick!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, apparently it's so 18 months ago. The site FAQ [alltooflat.com] shows that it was featured on Slashdot on Sept 8, 2002 and (in true Slashdot dupe tradition) Sept 12, 2002).
Belloc
Google Worshipers (Score:2, Interesting)
Join and embrace your inner Google!
*my* google interface (Score:5, Informative)
My google [google.com] interface is on my locally stored homepage, and is displayed as a simple white text box with the word Google beside it. The form itself then links to http://www.google.com/search, so I don't even have any idea what Google's homepage looks like. Plus I have quick links to all my regular webpages/portals/groups etc...
So if you want a new google interface, design one and access it on your local drive.
Those designers are clueless (Score:3, Insightful)
How to screw up a great, usable interface (Score:5, Funny)
The ones listed in the story were appalling.
What's wrong with graphic designers (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is intended to be something that you look at day in and day out. Novelty just doesn't last long in such an environment.
The problem is that the graphic design industry has a long tradition of working on product design. Product design has one purpose -- sell the product. Get a potential customer seeing a product in a store or in use by someone else to be overwhelmed and make an impulse buy. Novelty is *everything* in such a situation. Making someone say "co
Web standards and structural markup. (Score:5, Interesting)
On the matter of choosing a UI design for Google, it is of course just downright stupid to build any appearance into a website. The markup should be standards compliant and structural. Websites should obviously provide a default set of stylesheets and images, but the user should be able to apply any stylesheet they want. In the world envisioned by the W3C [w3.org], there's nothing stopping you from applying any appearance you want to the web, rather than the other way around.
Blog Spammers (Score:2)
Big mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
All one has to do is look at all the relatively useless flash-driven drivel on the web, and realize that artists and graphic designers are not all acquainted with the notion of usability. The one thing I truly like about google is its VERY functional simplicity.
Re:Big mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I think this is a case of everything looking like nails when the only tool (or mindset) you have is a hammer. Graphic designers are used to controlling EVERYTHING about presentation - hence their fatalistic fascination with flash, which allows them to rob the end user of any control over presentation (ie, font size, colors, page width, etc.) Problem is, HTML is by design, meant to be interpreted by the browser - whether it be lynx, a PDA browser, explorer, mozilla, webtv, etc.
The other issue is that HTML is meant as a text markup language. This isn't fixed text, but living, flowing text, that can be wrapped at unpredictable places, set in any font style and size, viewed at 512 x 384 or 1600 x 1200, and the leaner the underlying code is, the faster it transmits and loads.
Graphic Designer != HCI (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has done a splendid job on their interface. They simply made their pages as usable and functional as possible -- small, fast, minimalistic. They don't *need* to brand their pages all over the place with images and whatnot, because they rely on having a tremendously good product. Google use spread like wildfire because it's *so* *good*.
I would hope very much that Google does not redesign their interface. There's no need to worry abou
Google's minimalism (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally use Google for all different kinds of research; work, play, random boredom. If I had to classify my searches I'd probably come up with 100 distinct categories of information I look for weekly. And I'm just one of millions of users from all different backgrounds, all searching in different fields and for different reasons.
In my opinion, one of the reason Google is such an amazing tool for searching all these fields of data is beacuse it is so minimalist. It is unadorned, free of styling and starkly generic. Almost like a page whose CSS style sheet failed to load. Why is this a good thing? It imparts no bias to the research task at hand. You could be looking for monitor parts, anti-malarial drugs or advice on your tax deductions, and your mind is free to focus into the data at hand.
Combined with its DWIM features and fantastic algorithm, I think that the "blank page" look makes Google almost invisible. It's totally transparent, leaving just you and the data. Pretty cool.
OK, I don't think I've ever written a more flaky-sounding paradigmy comment in my life. Forgive me.
Justin
the power of Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
What is missing is a simple regex interpreter: it would drastically increase the efficiency of searches. Boolean stuff is cool, but it is by no means powerful: we've had boolean searches since, what, 1995, 1996? It's incredibly limited to AND OR NOT logic.
If MS's search engine attempts were to have such regex features, it would likely replace google for many of my features, provided it wasn't overly intrusive (which I doubt as even a remote possibility, actually). Google really needs to get with the times, so to speak.
Re:the power of Unix (Score:3, Insightful)
Regex searches could also be slow. Think of how many documents Google has to sift through to look for keywords. Now think about backtracking in word matching. In addition, unless Google implemented some kind of safeguards, someone could use up massive processing
Re:the power of Unix (Score:3, Interesting)
Exact-phrase matching is enough, I s'pose. However, I'm continually irritated by irrelivant search results due to there being the same words on the same page, but drastically spaced appart.
Now, let's say I'm looking for something that I'm not sure of specifically, say, a quote from a famous person that I know a couple key phrases of. Let's say the quote is "fuck monkeys, for they don't want to cuddle after sex". I search for, "monkey
The sudden interest because of the IPO .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Another thing to note in the excellence would be the lack of proper competition. If Teoma or Inktomi can deliver good results I am sure people would use that. This field is not a field of muscle but brains, and the smarter ones always win
Google button in the physical world (Score:3, Insightful)
Never let a graphic artist.... (Score:3, Insightful)
--D
Re:Ah, yes, google-bombs (Score:3, Funny)
weapons of mass destruction [blueyonder.co.uk]
french military victories [albinoblacksheep.com]
Re:Ah, yes, google-bombs (Score:2)
Re:Ah, yes, google-bombs (Score:2)
What pop-up ad? I use FireFox [mozilla.org] and block many ad servers in my "hosts" [accs-net.com] file.
Re:Ah, yes, google-bombs (Score:2)
P.s. I am not French.
Re:Shepard Fairey (Score:5, Insightful)
Google doesn't need to try to play off of visual novelty, because they've taken an approach of trying to produce the best product possible.
You know what *is* cool -- the features that they add constantly. They don't make any fuss about them, don't add a new little badge to indicate that you can do reverse phone lookups on the main page, or anything. They just let it work, and let you be pleased and surprised when you try searching and things Just Work.
I hope that whoever is responsible for the rabidly spartan design at Google never retires or otherwise leaves. He's done an incredible amount to help the company.
Besides...your worry is a distinct visual look? I know many web sites loaded down with Flash, tons of faux-3d bitmaps, and rollover menus with more fake 3d stuff. I can't think of any other major site that looks like Google. Simplicity is Google's trademark.