7 ms·
Google the way it's supposed to be
- growt 16y agoI think the one good thing about the google design change is that it may open the door a little bit for other search engines with different interfaces. The fact that we all like the old google design so much show how much everyone has gotten used to it.
- jacquesm 16y agoIt opens up the door for a competitor with the same design as the old google.
- redstar504 16y agoI don't understand why Google, and many other companies, change things that aren't broken. First they did it with Youtube, and now with their SERPS. Can someone explain the point of that? All it does is piss off users.
- whalesalad 16y agoThis sort of reminds me of the quote by Henry Ford, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." Sure the "If it aint broke, don't fix it" mentality makes a lot of sense, but at the same time if companies aren't innovating, changing things and pushing the limits, we'll never know what else is possible!
- rtp 16y agoAlso, if company A doesn't innovate, company B might come up with something better and steal A's customers.
- jarek 16y agoI'm not a big fan of that quote. If you can't read into it and figure out that what your customers actually want is a faster, weather-proofed way of getting around, you have larger problems than "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Using it to justify not listening to customers would make more sense if Henry Ford made his business successful by selling horsewagons.
- tengkahwee 16y agoI happen to think that the new YouTube is much more consistent than the one of the past.
- barrkel 16y agoMy main problem with it is that it's hard to gauge what the community thinks of a video at a glance. Instead of the 5-star system, the likes vs don't-likes are hidden away and you have to find the right button to click to show them.
- sesqu 16y agoIt's consistent, but consistently plastic. I feel like I have no hope of figuring out how the site works except by trial-and-error, because everything looks encapsulated in white plastic that might cover what's just underneath.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mgw 16y agoI see it like this: No single person (or specific group of people) can definitively decide if the old Google design is broken or not (which in this case probably means, being worse or better than the new one). The (arguably!) best measure if the new design is an improvement is how many people perceive it as such. My guess is Google itself has the best understanding if that is the case and wouldn't have changed it if it didn't think it was better (based on the data they gathered).
- lenni 16y agoExactly. It wouldn't be Google if they hadn't a/b-tested the hell out of this.
- acg 16y agoAnd there was me thinking I wonder if Google has done enough. The competition that search is facing now is fierce. Google was in danger of looking tired against other offerings and a user base can turn against a service quickly.
- Maskawanian 16y agoI must be the only one who likes the new Google interface.
- lambda 16y agoAm I the only one who's been seeing the new interface for several months now? 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.
- revaaron 16y agoNope, me too. I've had it for a few weeks. Don't like it much, wastes space, but it's not the end of the world. Oddly enough, the old look is showing up for me now- I'd been using the new look in this browser for weeks.
- meroliph 16y agoNo, you're not.
- andybak 16y agoI haven't noticed any problems with it. Would somebody care to list the worst 3 horrors of the new layout in order of ruining-my-life-ability?
- jacquesm 16y agoI don't think that covers it. Imagine you're living in a house for years, one day some guy comes in and changes everything subtly. 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.
- pavs 16y agoHonestly as long as I get my relevant, quick search results I don't really care that much. Obviously it is also important to have a reasonable UI that stays out of your search result; none of the design changes that Google have been through is disruptive enough for me to complain. There might be minor annoyances, but its still much much better than the second and third best options out there.
- iambvk 16y agoIt would be very nice, if it can be centered vertically too!
- barrkel 16y agoIt's still missing the dictionary links to word meanings for the query on the results page.
- arihant 16y agoI'd be happy with new design if it either hides the sidebar by default or gives me all the options by default. On most of searches, I see only 'Everything' and 'More' options. I'm already seeing 'Everything' on my search, what's the point of always showing the bar when I have to click once to see all options, making it entirely pointless.
- dchest 16y agoI just use Keyboard Shortcuts experiment (http://www.google.com/experimental/ http://www.google.com/experimental/), which hasn't been updated to a new version. I can't image searching without it.
- adg 16y agoSame here. I'm hoping that enough other people are hooked that someone will create a Firefox extension for it.
- nostrademons 16y agoGive it some time. The keyboard shortcuts experiment was disabled because it didn't work with the new interface and there wasn't time to fix it, but there's some attention being put into updating it now.
- jlft 16y agoI find the left sidebar annoying and very rarely use it. I wish there was a feature do enable/disable the sidebar like in the old interface. Other than this, I love the new visual tweaks.
- percept 16y agoDoes anybody else consider the new page number highlights less usable and intuitive than the old ones? For example, on the old version of the site, navigating to Page 2 highlights the second 'o' in red, and the number 2 in red. On the redesigned site the same scenario shows a number 2 with the same color as the other numbers and bold as its only distinguishing attribute. At a glance I find it harder to quickly identify the current page, and I suppose this would give less experienced users even more trouble.
- axod 16y agoIt'd be interesting to know how many users click past page 1. My behavior is more usually to look at page 1, and if what I'm looking for isn't there, adjust the search terms. I think the new numbers are pretty easy to see though.
- carussell 16y agoI have my homepage set to http://google.com/advanced_search?num=100 http://google.com/advanced_search?num=100. The num=100 makes the select box default to 100 results per page. I've been using this for years; I loathe pagination. In the past (let's say the Geocities era), it wasn't rare for me to click through to pages 2 and 3, even when showing 100 results per page. Aside: I swear there used to be an option on the Google home page for a (possibly very brief) time circa 1999–2000 that allowed you to select the number of results per page. But the Wayback Machine makes it appear otherwise, because a cursory glance at the archives shows that the select box only appeared pre-2000 on google.stanford.edu. But I don't think I ever googled from that domain. I might be wrong on the last point, though. There's absolutely no way I'm wrong about the select box appearing on the home page, though, because the removal of it was the entire reason I began clicking through to "Advanced Search", so that I could change the value to 100.
- metaprinter 16y ago"I have my homepage set to http://google.com/advanced_search?num=100 http://google.com/advanced_search?num=100. " Cool tip, i'm going to try this for a while.
- sachitgupta 16y agoReally miss the simplicity of the old Google. Hope they don't go the way of Yahoo :/
- gokhan 16y agoThe cursor in the search text box is not vertically centered (Firefox). Can't take my eyes off whenever I visit the page.
- metaprinter 16y agoyeah, it drives me nuts. if a monster like Google can't make something cross browser compatible... what are my chances?
- rortian 16y agoWhen do people here go to the Google home page? I only use Chrome and Opera so I never need to visit a url to do a web search.
- jedbrown 16y agoDoes anyone actually direct their browser to "google.com"? I always type the search query in the address bar, then I only ever see search results.
- zefhous 16y agoI do when I want to see a larger autosuggest box than the one in the Safari search box. You can adjust the width, but at the expense of the URL box.
- yason 16y agoAt least I haven't. I hadn't seen nor used the Google start page for... years?
- nostromo 16y agoIf you use Chrome, you can easily direct Google to use the old user interface for search results pages. Go to preferences -> Default Search -> Manage -> Add a new search engine The enter this as the search URL "http://www.google.com/search?hl=all&q=%s http://www.google.com/search?hl=all&q=%s (enter whatever for name and keyword) and make it the default search engine.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- klenwell 16y agoI like the design. So let me complain about something else: mailing-list/forum/newsgroup archivers. For instance, search on a certain type of error message, which as a developer I frequently do, and the first couple pages of results are littered with these. Example: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=python+441+Article+has+no+body http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=python+441+Art... I wish they would do 2 things: 1. Make sure the original message -- say from the original mailing list, newsgroup, or forum -- is listed first. Not necessarily #1, but above all the scrapers. 2. Consolidate the archivers (mail-archive.com, derkeiler.com, pubbs.net, etc.) into a single entry, perhaps with sublistings or something. Now where's the Google suggestion box?
- nostrademons 16y agohttp://www.google.com/quality_form http://www.google.com/quality_form But yes, we know. There are Googlers that read HN, you know. :-)
- klenwell 16y agoHmmm. I got a server error. But it sounds like the problem is recognized. Thanks for the link.
- poppysan 16y agoMy only problem is the left justification of search results. On a wide-screen monitor, it's a little awkward.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pg 16y agoIs there a way to generate a url for a particular query? I have a homepage with a bunch of search boxes. Incidentally, anyone know if there is a way to generate a url for a Twitter search? The one I had been using stopped working recently.
- chaosmachine 16y agoLike this? http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all#hl=all&q=this http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all#hl=all&q=this http://twitter.com/#search?q=this http://twitter.com/#search?q=this
- pg 16y agoI'm having trouble making an html form that will generate the request Google seems to need. Do you know what a form would have to look like? The Twitter url doesn't work for me, incidentally. I get a Twitter search page but with no query or search results.
- jarek 16y agoTry http://search.twitter.com/search?q=this http://search.twitter.com/search?q=this
- pg 16y agoGreat; this works: <form action="http://search.twitter.com/search" method="get"> <input type="text" size="30" name="q"/> </form>
- nostrademons 16y agoThe only thing Google needs is the q parameter: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com%20google http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com%20g... You just need a form with action="http://www.google.com http://www.google.com and a text input of name "q", assuming you only care about English-only.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mmphosis 16y agoQuit Safari Open Terminal cd /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/ cp Safari Safari.bak perl -pi -e 's/rls=en/hl=all/g' Safari cd ~/Library/Safari/ mv SearchProviders.plist.signed SearchProviders.plist.signed.bak
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jamesbritt 16y agoI like having the option of seeing more recent results, particularly the past year. The new layout requires more clicking to get that, and I keep forgetting which of the ambiguously names side menus I need to click to get it. And I see that clicking on the posted link has now changed the default appearance of Google every time I use it. :(
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- chmike 16y agoMy gmail address is shown on the top right. Thank you to remind me that I am tracked, I don't see the connection between the search interface and my gmail account I created just to pin down my name.
- jdietrich 16y agoI don't know if it says something about me or Google's corporate culture, but I have absolute faith that any change Google make is for the better. After reading all the "41 shades of blue" type stories, I struggle to believe that they would implement a change of any significance without very strong data, let alone a complete redesign of their core product. On an instinctual level, I feel that if Google's design clashes with my assumptions then my assumptions are probably wrong.
- jacquesm 16y agoI think I agree with you for the most part. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until about 3 months have passed. If after three months I still feel that they've done something wrong then I'll start to believe it. The reason why I've listed elsewhere in this thread, when change to something familiar happens we will have a 'knee jerk' response that is conservative, even if in the long term we'll change our minds.
- jsz0 16y agoGoogle has a good track record. In most cases Google is actually too conservative for my tastes. Some of these new defaults have been in Google Labs for years. The changes to GMail when Buzz was launched is the only big screw-up I can remember and they addressed that quickly enough.