I must be the only one who likes the new Google interface.
I only saw it in one of my browsers, so I figured they were doing a slow rollout, but it sounds like everyone else has been taken by surprise by the new interface, while I figured it was public knowledge long ago.
The walls are just a different shade, everything gets moved around a fraction. Nothing dramatic, just a lot of small changes.
You'd walk in and feel like you are in an unfamiliar place.
Unfamiliar ties right in with 'danger' on the reptilian brain level and that manifests itself as a feeling of being uncomfortable. Give it four weeks, change it back and people will be arguing the exact same thing.
Change always leads to resistance of this sort, even change for the better.
- initial bitching
- gradual acceptance
- the new is much better than the old
Time will tell on this one, if google reverts to the old lay-out then the conclusion is that they also thought that it was better before. But it is very well possible that this 'worse' lay-out is actually better for google, even if it is worse for the users, for instance because it increases their bottom line.
A design error is not always a business error.
Your point also hints at the fact that asking users isn't always the right thing to do - often they don't know exactly what they want. Either because they can't imagine it or because of the friction you describe.
Of course said idea was presented as a Malkavian prank in a Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebook I was reading, so it's hardly a serious suggestion.
I do occasionally wonder if you could make sweeping changes in a gradual enough way for regular users to not so much not mind as largely not notice, under the frog/frying pan principle. Sadly for this wondering, Shadowcat's a consultancy so the sites I work on with enough traffic for it to be interesting all belong to other people :)
Objectively I think it is a change for the better - but it does feel just a bit off.
Many websites have these issues. People cried foul to Fark when they did a redesign. An employee was fired for saying 'You will get over it'. People did.
I wonder how many others feel this way.
It was a very brave thing of them to do this because they must have realized it would lead to some backlash, but I really can't see how they could have done so differently anyway.
They needed to 'get with the times' again in a way that gives them room enough to get back to small changes, think of it as a spring housecleaning. Give it four weeks and everybody will be used to the new site and this problem will go away.
As things come on the web google is still minimalist, only a little less so than last week.
A bigger issue with google is the creeping pollution of the search results for 'web' searches with more and more non-relevant links to googles own sites and/or paid links.