5 ms·
Google.com tests a news-filled homepage, just like Bing and Yahoo
- donmcronald 3y agoWasn’t the clean homepage one if the most iconic differences between Google and other search engines that helped Google become dominant?
- bostik 3y agoThat, and the quality of the results. They've had to give up the latter, so might as well dump the former too.
- agumonkey 3y agothey also forgot about non-me-too innovation it seems
- taeric 3y agoThat is certainly the "legend" of how they succeeded. I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. That said, hard to view any story on how they "won" as much more than a "just so" story. :(
- eduction 3y agoClean home page was definitely a huge part of it: - Google predates widespread U.S. broadband, and even early DSL was not too fast. So cutting bytes made a real difference. -Search was not baked into the browser (search bar etc) so homepage speed really mattered -It was memorable branding, it clearly marked Google as more focused on quality search vs Yahoo et al who were trying to be "portals" with news and listings and so forth -- no one else understood how important search was, that it could be exponentially better and a differentiator
- taeric 3y agoI would want that to be true, but I just don't buy it. I remember search in the early days, and I honestly don't remember having a huge speed difference for most search sites. The homepage of all of them was relatively fast to load. Now, Yahoo and a few others were quick to jump into "portals" of news and such. That slowed down. But altavista and other base search pages were fast enough. (If a bit hard to remember the names of.) (I do find it funny that I remember so few of the options now.)
- taskforcegemini 3y agoprobably something difficult to know for a fact, as most people may not pick their tools as consciously. I however remember vividly the clean design winning me over instantly, compared to the alternatives, which were overloaded with ads or other content I was not interested in. same could and still can be said for gmail compared to other freemailers like gmx. but I'm sure google will not stop enshittifying all their services till they are ready for their graveyard.
- gumby 3y agoIt was definitely an important reason for early adoption (just remember how chaotic altavista and yahoo looked). That and good results. When they were funded there was some chatter that the things that made them good would go away.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. All of the other search engines just had a single text input for searches, too, e.g. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 By far the biggest reason was that the results were soooo much better. All of the other search engines basically used some variation of keyword matching in the document itself, which is why you'd see so many pages back in that time that were loaded with superfluous keywords. It was Google's original PageRank incarnation that made all the difference early on.
- taeric 3y agoI'm sure I'm remembering the "advanced search" that other sites had. I feel that those were more common back then. Granted, most of my searches back then were probably in libraries and such? The "advanced" search UI was amusing. You would click there thinking that you could give a better search, but you often got worse results by trying to use all of the fields. Google not really having an advanced search at least let you cycle more rapidly on raw searches.
- eyelidlessness 3y agoAt least among nerds who were early adopters, this was an oft cited reason for their personal enthusiasm about Google versus incumbent search engines. Of course quality of results was paramount, but the spartan homepage definitely drove that segment of early success. The theory that tech adoption promoted more mainstream adoption may be more “just so”, I think that’s harder to validate (but given the adoption of computers and internet at the time, it’s probably at least partially true).
- mardifoufs 3y agoYes whenever I use Bing (by accident) I'm instantly reminded of those "search engines" that came with crappy toolbars bundled in shady freeware installers. Same goes for any "crowded" search engine. I guess Bing is also a complete mess too because it has no coherence in its UI. Maybe google will be better in that regard, because Bing is hard to beat, but yeah...
- nine_zeros 3y agoThe enshittification continues. Can't wait for Google to be eaten by a competitor.
- TesterVetter 3y ago[dead]
- baz00 3y agoAnother fucking trash fire.
- bovermyer 3y agoIt's important to conduct experiments. I don't really have a problem with this. However, I also don't use Google Search. I use (and pay for) Kagi. So I'm not the intended audience for this.
- permo-w 3y agoI'd love to use Kagi, but honestly the price point is just too high. at $120 a year vs Google for free sadly I'm still going to choose Google. I would be willing to pay something in the region of $3-5 a month
- Mindless2112 3y agoI don't know if the price is too high, but the limits are too low. I can't deal with niggling thought that I might exceed the query limit -- every time I'd be thinking about whether I'm going to have to do another query because I made a typo or didn't pick the right search terms.
- bovermyer 3y agoThat just means we have different ideas of price. I use the $5/month tier ($60 per year) of Kagi. Google doesn't cost you money... but there is a cost associated with using it, and I'm not willing to pay that cost. Plus, Google Search's quality has dramatically dropped in the last ten years.
- 3y ago
- datadrivenangel 3y agoThese attention stealing portal aol-style homepages are a pox upon the 21st century. Also I think worse for long term business outcomes.
- sdfghswe 3y agoThe arc of advertising is long, but it bends toward enshittification.
- lattalayta 3y agoI have not visited the main google.com in years. I'd imagine the target audience is for people who have this page set as their homepage
- is_true 3y agoFor power users this is true. For other people it varies, I've seen people use the url bar to search google and then do a google search.
- 0xADADA 3y agoThe _last_ thing I want more of is news. I quit news in 2020 and I'm been happier.
- 0xDEF 3y agoI really wish there was an app to keep up with news that will actually have an impact on me like extreme weather, changes to the tax code, and significant changes to the economy.
- ravenstine 3y agoSuch a service could only work as advertised if it were run by a benevolent dictator with a zealous aversion towards anyone changing the product to include stories that tell you "that's a good thing" or "X group most affected" or "top 10 reasons men love hairy women" or "the science is settled". Otherwise, I can picture such a service declining rapidly.
- stvltvs 3y agoWe need self-hosted AI assistants that filter out the noise for us. Only the most impactful news stories, podcast episodes, etc. All under our full, personal control to train.
- eastbound 3y agoNews are free. You’re not the customer. People pay journalists to make people aware of some information. Entire countries own news agencies. This is what power is.
- d--b 3y agoMaybe some new search engine will emerge with a clean homepage. One that has just one text box, a “search” button, and why not a “i’m feeling lucky” button?
- is_true 3y agoai feeling lucky
- mongol 3y agoThey have lost it
- unsupp0rted 3y agoNot yet. First they have to buy Skype.
- lostmsu 3y agoBuying Skype wasn't such a bad idea. It was what they did or did not do to it later.
- swatcoder 3y agoCrunch crunch crunch. Everybody’s monetizing everything they can as the free money faucet gets turned off.
- Euphorbium 3y agoI bet that google has less than 5 years left as a company.
- eddythompson80 3y agoSorry but this is delusional. They can literally do nothing but drop the ball for the next 10 years straight and still be one of the largest tech companies. Look at IBM or Oracle.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoOn screen-sharing I see my clients open new browser tabs to an eye-gouging mess of homepage widgets. News, weather, things a pop singer said today... they see this 50 times a day? I don't know how they live like this.
- IanCal 3y agoTime to bring back iGoogle
- systemz 3y agoGoogle is forgetting their roots. Maybe it's a good thing - competitors will have easier job to take search market.
- xnx 3y agoWhen you can initiate a search directly from the address bar, what should the role of a "homepage" be? It's reasonable that there should be some "zero click" attempt and content that would be useful. If this is instead used like the typical chumbox content, that would be a real disappointment. Google would also be shooting itself in the foot if it added a bunch of distractions to the page just as they were poised to realize a intelligent assistant capability (which would benefit from having as clean and interface as they had when they launched web search).
- jeffbee 3y agoHonestly can't remember the last time I used Google's home page. I get to it via omnibar, new tab page search, or voice search.
- dimal 3y agoLooks like the work of a product manager changing shit up in order to justify their salary.
- candiodari 3y agoJustify their salary? They fired 12000 employees last year! There are portions of the company that are in panic. And if blind is to be believed, the next round is already being decided on.
- Isthatablackgsd 3y agoBasically iGoogle but this time directly on front page of google.com. It will outlast the discontinued iGoogle (2005 - 2013) this time?
- 7e 3y agoThis is a thinly disguised vehicle to deliver ads in sneaky places.
- billconan 3y agoGoogle attribute its success to its search quality. But as a user, I've never done any A/B testing to quantify "search quality". For me, the reason for me abandoning Yahoo for google was because the page was simple and loaded faster.
- jinushaun 3y agoTime to look for another search engine. I originally switched to Google because of the barebones homepage, not search quality.