Google is sporting a new look these days and one that I personally happen to like very much. Why you might ask? Well because it does not have anything other than a search bar with the options “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” and pretty much nothing else. All the other links like Web, Images, Videos, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail, more â–¼and other familiar links like Advanced Search and Language Tools to the right and Advertising Programs – Business Solutions – About Google – Go to Google India, ©2009 – Privacy at the bottom and iGoogle | Search settings | Sign in at the top right are all missing from action. All these links however do reappear when the mouse is moved over the homepage by the user. The thinking behind this new look approach is that for people who have come for Google Search services that is exactly what they will get and those users who are looking for other links like Gmail, News, Images, Maps, etc. will get exactly that as and when they move the mouse in search for the same.
Trust Google to be one up on its competitors. I was using Microsoft’s Bing for a while and was thinking how much it looks and performs like Google and now Google has made subtle changes to its homepage to move away from its old look. I certainly favor this new look as I use Google mainly for its search and it was its minimalistic approach that drew me to Google in the first place. Being a Yahoo and MSN user in the past I can certainly say their chockablock full of information pages that took forever to load at times were definitely not to my liking. More so when in fact I found myself reading some useless bit of news or information prominently displayed on the Yahoo or MSN portal and ended up very obviously forgetting what I was looking for in the first place. Distraction does have its merits or is that demerits!
The best workaround to this I found was to begin using Google Desktop with its hotkey enabled which brought up the search box right inside of Microsoft Word (or whatever else I was doing) and yes right in the middle of my work when I needed to search for something. This certainly kept me focused on work and away from all the distractions or rather interesting bits of tidbits, which certainly were a distraction during my working hours. Google most admittedly has never been a distraction from work for me since I do depend on search for my work and while this new minimalistic homepage of Google will not really be making so much of a difference to me personally, it should definitely help others who use Google as their homepage to stay focused on their work and the search involved on it.
Further reading on http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont.html