Google Homepage Design Experiments

October 6, 2009

google testing homepage

Anyone today saw a difference in the Google homepage and the new “removed” submit search? Unfortunately, I didn’t see it but thanks to the video in youtube, techcrunch and webmasterworld:

In my opinion, I am not a fan with removing that little cute “search” button. But here are some webmasters opinions:

Jamie, I am not a fan. Would love to know the logic behind this move? Why the fade? To just show the logo and search box? do the other links really distract?

When I hit “google search”, I have something in mind that I’m looking for, and thinking “hey, what the heck is Google doing?” distracts me as well as delays me.

By the time the fade is finished doing it’s thing, I’d normally already have my results and be off looking at what I was searching for.

Also, it’s hugely broken. Firefox’s HTML validatior comes up with 154 warnings.

You can leave it if you want, but it should absolutely be something that can be disabled in Preferences.

Very nice, but there is a bizzare contrast to the “Holiday Logo” of the day (it’s a barcode, which has no relation to the Google logo at all) – so on one hand you have Google trying to clean up their homepage and on the other hand they are making it look so bad some people will think it’s broken (not everyone will immediately realise what that barcode is).

What is your opinion about this move?