Google slims down homepage to increase appeal

[Justin]

From the start, Google's simplicity has been one of their more attractive attributes. Keeping in tune with that, the company has redesigned their homepage to make it more basic in appearance, hiding everything on the page excluding the logo, search box and search buttons. All of the additional buttons will re-appear if the mouse is moved over the page, quickly fading in to view.

The intention is to create a more minimalistic approach for the most commonly used Google function: search. Comments on Google's blog indicated they tried several approaches to slimming down their homepage, but the fade-in was selected among a handful of others as the least distracting.

The initial success of Google's search page was influenced by its lightweight approach. Clearly, they wish to continue that tradition with this change.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/37208-google-slims-down-homepage-to-increase-appeal.html

 

[Serag]

But I guess that this approach leaves fair portion of normal users uninformed about their numerous other services..

 

[swilllx2p]

I never thought it got to a point where it was anywhere near bloated anyways. I'm not really seeing a need for this change..but that said I checked it out and it works just fine, the fading is a nice touch, but yeah never bloated at all imo..I'm not complaining though.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Uninformed how? A slight twitch of the mouse brings other features to view.

 

[insect]

One day Google won't even have a search box... just a chip in your head and when you think it, it does it!

 

[PUTALE]

I thought google is already slim enough. wonder how much slim it would even be

 

[treeski]

I'm a sucker for good visuals and clean/neat web pages, so I've never been fond of the Google look, despite how powerful their search engine is.

 

[compdata]

The simplicity is great. However i guess i always tend to drag my mouse to text boxes where i am about to type, so this doesn't do much for me as everything else always pops into view. I would like it much better if it went away if you didn't move your mouse for a couple seconds.

 

[Afenix]

haha google looks great! Now it loads so smooth ( The search bar only) and other things load slower. A really nice thing they made. I Like it sooo much! Try it out now people! :]

 

[Guest]

Another step back for google.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

@compdata: You can begin typing without clicking on the Google search bar -- but yeah, habits like that are tough to break.

 

[kaonis92]

It's certainly looking better but it's still not anything special by visual terms.

 

[Decimae]

I just noticed it. It looks great now.

@Guest, it's a step forward, not backwards.

 

[MaXtor]

Personally I would like it if I could customize google to have just the header and search box all the time (no fade in of anything).

 

[Serag]

Yeah true..but eh..I was kind of speaking of myself because way earlier I wasn't aware of their other services..so I thought others might be the same
But thats really was back when I wasn't informed about google as a whole..I was more or less like those who think browser is google hahahhaa

 

[LightHeart]

compdata said:
The simplicity is great. However i guess i always tend to drag my mouse to text boxes where i am about to type, so this doesn't do much for me as everything else always pops into view. I would like it much better if it went away if you didn't move your mouse for a couple seconds.

I agree with this, yes you can start typing but I tend to move my mouse and everything pops into place just as always, so the end result is nothing. If you really don't want to see all that stuff, just enter your search into your search bar in your browser and skip going to the page at all. Having said all that, I tend to go to Bing with the pretty pictures anyways.

 

[Chazz]

I set my homepage as bing cause the pictures are sooo pretty. Though I also like simple webpages like google's.

 

[AnonymousSurfer]

That's good I guess, but unnecessary if you ask me

 

[dellz]

why slim down the google homepage in my opinion it is totally modest and dosent need any sliming , it feels like kinda washing a clean car =/

 

[slh28]

Let's hope they keep those occasional festive themes which I find very refreshing.

 

[Eddie_42]

cant say i see the improvement...the search features (web, image, video, map, news ...etc) are all still up top, you just don't see them until you mouse into the window...but even then...they show up whether or not you want them too....seems to be something to suck a little more bandwidth. I also dont see it going away with idle activity, or changing windows.

 

[InsaneVr6]

Google has been doing this for the past few months I noticed. Some days it would fade in on mouse-over on other days it would be normal.

So far I have only seen it work on Internet Explorer, never on Opera (which is my main browser).

As far as that goes I love it! Google's page was arguable the most simple home page on the internet with that much traffic, and now they made it even better. It started with the bigger search form and the topics that show up when you start typing. Google is about search, and they are right at the point with their homepage.

 

[vangrat]

As the fade in feature is nearly instantanious I honestly don't see what the big deal is. All of the stuff is still there it now only appears when you move the mouse...woopee...

 

[lfg18]

i have just checked the site and it sure looks great, I liked the new image, but i have to agree with some of you, I move my mouse to get to the box and everything pops out, It would look better if it dissapeared again.

i hope they keep that simplicity with their Crome OS

 

[Kibaruk]

Good! I thought my explorer had an issue haha.

It looked weird, after all this time one kinds of get used to the full site.