How Google Got its New Look | Hacker News Reader

How Google Got its New Look

businessweek.com

34 pointsprofgubler25 comments

I don't like the new look.

http://i.imgur.com/Uw2ry.png

If I wanted it to look like Bing, I'd use Bing.

I'm almost tempted to use Bing. The new look reminds me of AltaVista or Excite back in the day, and recent Google search results have been about the same quality. When did they lose their touch?

It does look a lot like Bing - but they copied the intelligent suggestions part of Bing, which is what I like about it (for example, the images filter will stand out when Google thinks I might be looking for images). I kind of wish they would give me suggested queries on the left like Bing does too.

Ever since I had my Google service disrupted by the Great Chinese Firewall (text queries are fine now, but innocent Google image queries have always been dicey whereas Bing image searches are almost never blocked), I've been using Bing as my default. I'm pretty satisfied with the results for the text result queries. And when you compare the two image search engines (at least interface-wise), I think Bing wins hands down.

Except they didn't really copy Bing; this results layout has, unless I'm mistaken, been kicking around for a while, with tricks for turning it on so you'd always get it.

It's also just a sidebar. Not really a revolutionary idea.

The search options (or, as of yesterday, “tools”) have become tremendously helpful, making them more visible seems like a obvious step to take. Might be annoying for people like you and me who always knew how to access and use them but I think we are in the minority.

(All else is mostly cosmetic and very much a question of taste. I see signs of clear progress with a aesthetic that, while being distinctively Google, manages to convey to me for the first time that they care about details.)

It's worse than that, I use the advanced options from the CLI.

Rarely click on the "advanced search" link, the left column in the new design is a waste of space to me.

Ugh, I've become a Google search snob!

Single page link: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_20/b41...

Most of those details are hashed out at a daily "stand-up" meeting of roughly 10 people, held at 4:07 p.m. (Google co-founder Sergey Brin once estimated that it took seven minutes to walk across the Google campus; it's now company tradition that meetings end on the hour and new ones start seven minutes later.)

Um, what? This isn't something I've heard of.

I've heard that on multiple occasions from Googlers.

While I don't work at Google, I have dozens of Googler friends and none have ever mentioned this.

I spoke to a couple today, in addition to asking my wife. All said they'd never heard of it.

The article says that Google doesn't disclose which part of revenues comes from AdWords and which from AdSense. But what about this slide from their quarterly earnings report http://i.imgur.com/v0ijp.png I always assumed that "google.com" refers to AdWords and "network" refers to AdSense.

On a side note, what is the origins of the tradition in business magazines to enclose the stock ticker symbol after a listed company's name? (Inc. magazine is another one where I notice this quite strongly)

Do people impulse-buy stocks? (I wouldn't wonder.. maybe they think reading a magazine article counts as "research"?)

I wonder why Google won't give us features such as "Mark this as spam" or "I never want to see this again in my results".

On the scale of Google I wonder if that little bit of added complexity lower overall click through on the ads. Wonder why they don't also stretch the search out across the page like their top bar is, when you have 1920 pixels across it seems cramped.

Because lines which allow for more than, say, one hundred characters are a bad idea?

If you try different display options you will see that the width of the pages is designed around such a line length limit. They don’t shy away from going wider when they don’t show text (try Images) or from using a additional column (try Updates). This suggests to me that they know of the space they have, they just don’t want to fill it by mindlessly lengthening lines.

Yeah, but have you seen the percentage of users with > 1280 pixels? Certainly not the majority.

Certainly not, sure not all layouts can easily scale, but I think Google could afford to maintain a few different widths.

I realise from my own web design and development experience that this is easier said than done but on their scale and the problems that they deal with I don't think it's to unreasonable.

The reason they made it fixed width is to bring the ads closer to the results. It was a financial move on their part.

Good insider perspective on the process - for better or for worse. I'm sure we'll get used to the new layout, I can already see how his will save me from moving my mouse around too much.

Now only if we could get IMDb.com redesigned!

I don't see the new page. Is it US-only for now?

It applies to me, and I'm in Canada.

The search UI improvements are particularly good now that i'm used to the collapsible sidebar.

Danny Sullivan's new design in-depth: http://searchengineland.com/meet-the-new-google-41286

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