Google has a new look for its homepage. If you thought the search engine had a minimal homepage to begin with, its gotten even more sparse. Now, when you land on the Google homepage, you’ll only see the search box, the Google logo and the buttons.
If you just want to search, you can perform your keyword search, press enter and receive results for your query. If however, you move your mouse over the homepage, a top menu of various Google products such as images, video, maps and news will appear.
Google tested 10 different fade in variants and selected the current version as it was the most user friendly. As to why the change, Google indicated that the vast majority of users are there for search only and are thus presented with a clean homepage, while those that need Google applications can easily access them with their mouse.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Joy,
Change for nothing more then the sake of change. Now the page loads slower and you have to wait for the bloody scripting to come to life.
Oh Joy.
Too bad Google could not be bothered to try the 11′th variant. Leaving it the **** alone. You don’t fix what isn’t broke.
@td, The change in load time isn’t noticeable by the human eye (check with httpfox). You may have thought it was loading because you didn’t see everything you expected. Also, google is generally the choice of most searchers because of its simplicity; the further simplification, although nominal, is a psychological strategy: let the user think about what they want to find.
I see this change to be for the worse, as google was developed for the no-frills quick search engine that it is. The difference is that now it doesnt give you the option of convenience. Sure, 1 second doesn’t seem like alot of time, but sometimes I’m in a rush I just want to click and go. Function > Form.
The change certainly is noticeable by the human eye — it’s been bothering mine for a while. Shortly after Google began experimenting with this, I cleared my cookies and found a way to turn off the “fade.” I’m sorry to see the company pushed ahead with it anyway. It’s an unnecessary change that adds nothing to functionality and irritates a number of people.
Frankly, the first time I saw the “fade,” I thought that Google was broken or had been hit by a virus. An easy way to turn it off would be welcome. (The same is true of IE8’s gray-out “domain highlighting,” but that’s another story altogether.)
I don’t like the FADE….it’s annoying and distracting. Please go back to the way it was. LH
I absolutely hate the google fade, very tacky…..someything Microcrap would do. Switched my homey to Yahooer. Gooble you blew it on this one. I give it 3 months.
tomtom
This feature is so annoying. Just slows you down when need to click on the images link. The links were also better right above the search box.
Google have now announced that this is now the norm for EVERYBODY!!! (Someone at Google must have been drunk that day!!!).
But, there IS a way to disable it!!!!
Firstly, it only works in Firefox. Internet Explorer does not have this feature.
If you do not have Firefox already, you can get it for free here: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
Next, you need a Firefox add-on called Greasemonkey. You can get that here : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
Click on ‘Add To Firefox’.
When it’s installed, close Firefox down and then re-start it.
Finally, you need the Greasemonkey script that disables the fade. You can get that here : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/63436
Click ‘install’
All done!!! Just like it was before
No fade 
You can also just add ?q=%0A to the end of the url and it will take you to a different google page that has no fade (It’s technically the default layout for after you search, just with no search parameters so there’s nothing returned).
So now my google bookmark looks like:
http://www.google.com/search?q=
So bloody annoying and totally pointless.
I read elsewhere that complaints can go direct to the person responsible at google jon@jonwiley.com or he has twitter @jonwiley.com