We all know that Google is a big fan of minimalism, especially when it comes to its famous homepage, where it tries to keep its ‘word count‘ down to 28 words (actually, it looks like it might be up to around 30). Tonight, Google is apparently experimenting with taking that concept to a whole new level: the site is bucket testing a new effect that hides everything on the Google homepage aside from the search box and Google’s logo, only revealing the rest of the navigation elements with a nifty fade effect when you move your mouse.
There are a few notable omissions from the ‘fade-in’ homepage though — you’ll notice that the site’s “Google Search” and the famous “I’m Feeling Lucky” button are both missing. Update: We’ve gotten another screenshot where these two buttons do appear, so it looks like Google is testing multiple versions.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t have the new, highly streamlined page — this is apparently part of a Google bucket test, which means only a small subset of users have access to it. It’s entirely possible that the new design will never be released broadly too, so don’t get alarmed if you hate it.
Thanks to Elchanan Heller for the tip.
So what exactly would be the point of this?
World Peace.
Weird. I thought it was ending world hunger. Either way, noble effort.
Wow, all of a sudden I have this inner peace I can’t quite explain… oh wait, never mind.
+10
Guess ‘I am feeling lucky’ will be missed
+10 is so insightful. Thankyou for adding to the discussion. I might have walked away disappointed otherwise.
What’s the point of you being alive, you wigger?
I support the removal of “Go”, “Submit”, buttons as well! (on single field forms)
Yeah, what’s up with giving users a clear indication about how to initiate an action? Make ‘em guess how to do everything I say!
lol.
I hate sites that don’t have go/submit buttons. Unless they add them back on a mobile version a lot of phones can’t use it (no enter button on lower spec phones)
You don’t want to know how many support questions we got on a form that didn’t have one. Less tech-savy users just don’t understand how they can commit their change without a button.
I’m in favor of a compromise: only show the submit button after a user focussed the text field. (and/or typed a valid input)
I like this. The buttons are unnecessary. If it’s unnecessary, remove it.
For me, Google.com has reverted to the small buttons. The look it had up until a couple weeks ago! Now I really like the new look, I want it back!
Did you test this yourself, or is this just based on the video?
I want it!
I never even go to the page anymore…
I support no more than 2 pages of results on a one page scroll. Cut the cyberfat cause users aren’t falling for it. Time for user experience to come first and not page views or trying to appear larger than you really are.
wrong blog?
“I’m Feeling Lucky” is stupid.
It actually loses them a lot of money (you don’t see any ads if you click it) so this is probably an attempt to wean people off it.
It’s obvious that you don’t have a clue exatly what the I’m Feeling Lucky does. It is extremley helpful if you know how to use it correctly
What does im feeling lucky do?
What is it for?
I agree. You have a strong lack of understanding of what can be done with it. You’ve probably typed in something in the past and hit the button for the sake of novelty but never bothered understanding it’s capabilities.
Ignorance.
How dare you, sir.
And it’s “its capabilities”, not “it’s”.
Dude, there is a bug. I m logged on iGoogle and it wouldn’t take me to “Classic Home” WTF
that’s pretty slick
It looks like they have taken inspiration from microsoft office 2007, where it shows a fading text formating toolbar when you move the mouse pointer.
It’s For the Children!
My guess is that part of this could be performance based. If they only load the logo/text box then they can delay load everything else the page. Faster page load = more searches.
The javascript to load the rest of the page & fade it in would probably be bigger than the rest of the page.
Either way, that’s not what they’re doing. (Good thing too – think about the people without javascript!) The whole page is loaded at once, the other bits are just hidden away until the mouse is moved. It greatly declutters the interface for the 80% of the time where you go to google.com, type in your search, and press enter. I like it. (though, in combination with their current barcode logo, it was a bit disconcerting the first time I saw it.)
Aren’t they going to lose their PR with no actual content?!
LOL
Inspired by your comment, I googled “search engine”
Google is the 8th result – after Altavista, Dogpile, Ask & Lycos.
that sucks. i noticed the same thing when i wiki’d search engines.
I just searched “search engine”, and it’s now at TWELFTH place.
wasn’t their original rationale of the sparse home page based on page load speed? So isn’t adding stuff like this contradicting that?
looking pretty.. nice & simple look
Now I want to be a web designer at Google
you mean you won’t do anything as a google designer?
Neat! To be honest I never looked at anything else on Google’s home, it is always search box and when they put up a special logo.
I would be nice if they released this as an option to all users in the future.
Fade away
At the risk of sounding like one of those “I told you so” types….
Check out our blog post (from July 2009) on Why Google will kill the “I’m feeling lucky” button and add $230 mn to their net income – virtually, overnight! That’s a 5% growth in bottomline, by the way.
More at http://blogs.ve...g-lucky-button/
So it is no world peace? They are making money removing the button?
Btw, I guess that people hardly use the button. (I doubt even the 1% percent). And as you point out, if it favors them, why not trash it?
Oh they will (thrash it, I mean). And of course, like we’ve said in our blog, you can also expect Ms.Mayer to say something like…
“…extensive research conducted by Google showed that the absence of the I’m Feeling Lucky button translated to a user taking 6 milliseconds less – to reach the results page he was looking for. As much as the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ is a part of Google history, removing it makes for an enhanced user experience, and finally, Google is all about the user’s experience. So, with a heavy heart…”
I prefer the old look http://www.retroogle.com/
It looks like as if Google is going back to it’s roots. In 2000 or 2001 the page was much cleaner and word count was definitely less than 28.
It had the old Google logo on it, a search field and submit button. Below was a copyright notice and the number of pages in the index, iirc.
This is a useless change
I quite like the fade-in… I NEVER actually click on the Google Search button, OR at the “I’m feeling lucky” button. I just press enter on the keyboard after I am finished typing my query. So I think its a smart hack, especially if Lux’s analysis of missed revenues is actually correct…
That’s logical. Even with a minimalist homepage, there are distractions from the core search & revenue generation functions. Dropping these out focuses the user back on the job in hand, and hopefully (for Google) increases revenue.
I never go to the Google home page. I use a toolbar for the search when I use Google. However, I’m on Yahoo multiple times daily. I have never understood the hype of the ‘minimalist’ Google home page.
And here is a perfect example of Google Website Optimizer. Given Google is probably using a more advanced version then what they publicly released, it is still a very useful tool to sort through all these opinions and find out the facts.
I love Google! Thanks for sharing. I found this blog extremely interesting.
This is so stupid. The original idea behind minimizing the homepage to 28 words was so that the page would load faster for people on slow connections. But if they have elements that fade in and out, they still have to be loaded regardless of whether they are being displayed, and it ultimately makes no difference in the page load time.
The original idea is rather irrelevant now, as no-one* has internet slow enough that a 15kB download is going to take long enough to matter. Especially considering that half of that is images that will be cached. And the javascript is cached too!
If it were an issue that the homepage were loading slowly, Google could remove the pre-loader for http://www.goog...s/nav_logo7.png as that image is literally a third of what is downloaded when you go to google.com, and it isn’t made visible on the page. They don’t because it makes the search experience smoother when the results snap-back to you as soon as you enter your search.
The reason for the minimal home page is to focus people on the task of searching and to minimise distraction. I’m not sure the fade in controls are a good idea, but I can see where they’re coming from with it.
Robin Sloan’s writing a novella and there’s an eerie bit in there about a Google-like AI entity:
“There was no search box. Just a button. You pressed it and it simply gave you what you looking for. It worked even if you didn’t know what you were looking for…”
You can watch him read an excerpt here:
http://www.kick...copy/posts/1699
Yandex in Russia has had this page in place for months (or years?):
http://ya.ru/
Keep yer trap shut you damn Commie.
so did they replace the “i’m feeling lucky” button with “do you feel lucky, punk?” for those, who were ‘lucky’(?!) enough to test this feature?
Gimmicky.
The point is simple… so to speak. I’ve always appreciated that Google’s homepage puts the cursor in the right place. Too many sites force you to use the mouse to click in a box before you can type.
So until you decide to use your mouse there’s no need for links and the clutter they bring. By hiding the extra options the user is encouraged to type and hit enter.
You could argue that by not showing the links the user will not even know they are available. But this design certainly highlights the main purpose of the page and strikes a great blow against the tyranny of the mouse.
Why don’t you just go to http://www.google.com/custom/ if you want a barebone search interface?
I HATE IT!, I HATE IT!, I HATE IT!
Me to. It slows me down.
http://userscri...ipts/show/59303
This is not at all intuitive – at least my opinion. Somehow most people seem to think that anything G does is always great. As a company that’s a nice prior to have.
This is extremely weird when it just starts happening to you during “barcode logo day”. Nothing but a black and white barcode and a text box on a white page.
My account got picked for this A/B test and today they had the barcode logo. So, for me there aren’t even words on the page. It’s a little too futuristic but I’d keep it if I could.
This is the result of having 30 people on the “user experience” team with nothing to do.
I enabled this in Firefox. Could you please tell me how to DISABLE it?
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. If only I could keep the damn useless links and copyrights faded out.
thanks for your sharing!
I love the new home page!! Nice touch from Google must be jQuery or something. I’ve been seeing it for a week now!!
Love it
Least I know i’m not going nutz on what the problem was with my firefox. I hate it anyway.
I HATE your fading homepage.
It is of NO USE.
It is a SIMPLE HOMEPAGE REQUIRING NO FADE EFFECT.
PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK TO ITS ORIGINAL FORM.
Here, just use this version…. at least they haven’t messed with it yet.
http://www.google.com/firefox
I’m always getting this new home page in Chrome, but never in any other browser.