Google Gravity, replicated

When posting something like this, please explain to me what I should expect and why it is interesting, either here or on your blog or whatever.

What happens is namely that I get a page that looks like google.com. Big whoop. And considering that the URL contains the string "chromeexperiments" I didn't immediately realize that I had to open it in Safari instead of Chrome to see the effect.

For others in the same pickle: The effect is that the DOM elements fall down, as if there is gravity.

Nice effect!

In this, the motion and positioning are somewhat arbitrary/random. (Well, later query results pile on top like sediment, but it does not otherwise appear that the acceleration/velocity or start/end positions are indicators of result type, relevance, etc.)

My guess is that with the rising ease of animation on the web, motion (and changing scale/rotation/etc) will increasingly be used as a substantive indicator -- not just a transition or flourish. It will give extra hints of the underlying values or data structure. For example, the most relevant search result might wiggle a little... or results that tilt or vibrate in varying directions might subtly hint at ranking according to a secondary scale.

Of course this can be overdone to the point of obnoxiousness... but sprinkled in, maintaining a high data-motion ratio (like Tufte's data-ink ratio), such animated text will seem natural to the screen medium.

The most interesting effect happened when I entered in search terms. If the search box was focused on page load, that "feature" would be more discoverable.

This is really old, created in 2009/03/18. You an also use: gravoogle.com or gravigoogle.com to get to this page. He also created the Google Sphere a couple of months later, though that one has never been updated to the new design: http://mrdoob.com/96/google_sphere

This never ceases to entertain me. I only wish I could do something like that some time.

If all it takes to get on the HN front page is to post Three.js demos...

Wow, pretty impressive tilting that around on an iPhone.

it seems you can even drag and play with the google logo...nice :)

Nice work! very entertaining. Now I wish google use it:-)