Google rolled out their new look to the Google.ie website this morning and it’s fair to say that most people probably didn’t even notice.
Google have decided to add a bit of life and colour to their much loved search engine, which makes it a little easier to spot some of the really cool features they added a little while ago. Things like the ability to search news, blogs, books and videos are now pretty much in your face and hard to miss, unlike the “show options” link they had in the past.
They’ve also decided to style the old looking “search” button and joined it with the actual search box on the inside pages. The logo is a lot more striking and clear than it has been in the past. Overall, they are pretty much subtle changes, but they have a nice fresh feeling effect to it.
There is one change that I really don’t get the concept behind and it’s this… If you visit the homepage of Google, e.g. www.google.ie and don’t move or click your mouse OR enter a search term, all you see on this page is the logo, the search box and the search buttons (as per image below).
However, when you do interact in some way with page, whether that be a mouse over, a click or enter a search term, the other elements fade (yes fade) in (as per image below)…
For the life of me, I just don’t understand why they’ve done this. Is it someone thinking it’s funky and cool??
This is appears to be a feature that is in complete contrast to the reasons given by Marissa Mayer as to why they value their copyright notice so much… Read why Google value their copyright notice so much
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#1 by Ian Quigley at May 7th, 2010
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They do it to avoid clutter. Most people just type something in and search. Some people want advanced features etc, so would typically use their mouse to find the feature. Any mouse movement near the “hot” area shows you what your looking for. Do you use the mouse to click on the textbox?
#2 by Tom Doyle at May 7th, 2010
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Hi Ian
Thanks for stopping by.
No personally I use a mouse as little as possible and to be honest, the less clutter for me the better.
However, my problem with this is that, it is in complete contradiction to Marissa’s statements in the past as to why they haven’t updated their homepage to make it more “flashy” looking.
#3 by Cormac Moylan at May 31st, 2010
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The thing I am most surprised by is the movement of “Pages From…” from under the search box to the left column.
It”s pretty much been killed off. At least this means I can now better justify not reporting on PFI rankings!
#4 by Tom Doyle at May 31st, 2010
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Hi Cormac
Yeah a lot of people seem to have an issue with that – but to be honest, it doesn’t bother me that much. Yeah it’s a little annoying that you have to search first and then filter rather than in the past being able to do it from the outset.
But it was one of those features they obviously felt wasn’t used enough to warrant it’s prime position. I’m sure they didn’t make the decision lightly… well I’m not sure, I’d just like to think they wouldn’t have!