Is Google using depressing CSS with IE? | Hacker News Reader

Is Google using depressing CSS with IE?

5 pointsDougN711 comments

I'm not a conspiracy theorist (don't you love posts that begin like that!), but today I noticed an unmistakable difference between the Google search results between the major browsers. It wasn't like this yesterday.

See http://i.imgur.com/kSR2omq.png

Results in IE only appear a washed out, less saturated, and grey (especially when you see a full page of results). I have a very hard time believing Google would try to psychologically manipulate people like this, so what else could be reason for the difference?

Very interested in theories :)

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IMHO, this is barely noticeable and one must be a very fragile person to be psycologically manipulated by a darker shade of text color.

It's quite noticeable on a page full of results. I'm finding it irritating because the contrast is lower.

I don't think this is just directed to IE users, they are probably doing their routinary A/B tests. I've also seen this darker color scheme in the past weeks even though I wasn't using neither Windows nor IE, it was Chrome.

Haven't seen it at all while logged in, but sometimes incognito SERPs will have the washed out color.

You're probably right. IE is now showing the same color as Chrome like it was yesterday.

UPDATE: 6 hours later (and clearing cookies) and the Google search results are now showing the same color in IE as Chrome. A/B testing seems like the best guess...

This comes from a company that puts #FFF7ED as a background color on the SERP ads so that people with flat screens will not see it from certain angles and believe they are search results.

They most certainly possess the capability of doing a lot of A/B testing due to their immense volume, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it an attempt to psychologically manipulate people.

I know: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6055862

please create a second triple of screenshots with a blank page showing two divs with background #093 and #12c. perhaps it's a color managment problem on client side.

Maybe a color management issue in IE 10?

right - has anyone actually just looked at the color hex values in css to confirm whether google is presenting a different color?

[update]: yeah the colors are identical - check your color settings

color: #12c # IE10 color: #12c # chrome 28

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