Google deserves a lot of credit. They built a better search engine and have kept it one step ahead of the competition for seven years. They reinvented online advertising with AdWords and gave everyone with a website the ability to make a couple of bucks with AdSense. Gmail is one of the best webmail clients out there and Google Maps is just so amazingly great, it shocked MapQuest and Yahoo Maps out of their decade-long slumber.
With the exception of a couple of privacy freakouts, Google’s image has remained mostly untarnished. When the US government recently asked all the major search engines for server logs, Yahoo forked them over, but Google said no, earning the admiration of every geek who’s ever searched for a naughty word or two.
Google’s gotten a lot of praise, and they deserve pretty much all of it. But just because they’re the biggest dog in search, that doesn’t mean they’ve done everything right. In fact, when it comes to visual design, they’ve done pretty much everything wrong.
Portal to the Past
In the late nineties and early 2000s, when words like “portal” and “stickiness” were thrown around like so much unwise investment, every search engine piled layer upon layer of crap on their homepage, making it harder and harder to ascertain what, exactly, they did. If you want an example, just look at Yahoo’s homepage today – it’s still a “portal” in all its hectic, eye-crushing glory.
But Google kept it real, man. Their Zen-like homepage has remained pristine through it all. But what seems like smart marketing now was probably just design ineptitude. You don’t have to look much past Google’s Fisher Price logo to know it: These people have no use for design.
After a few years, the sparseness of Google’s homepage and refrigerator magnet logo have become their brand. They’re the anti-design search engine. But as they roll out new services (Calendar, Gmail, Etc), their pristine homepage’s days are numbered.
The Problem
Too many of today’s web companies simply copy Google’s sparse homepage because they think some of that success might rub off on them. But Google was successful in spite of their design, not because of it. Google rules the web today because their technology was so great, so unique back then, that users were willing to overlook their hostile user experience.
Imagine a web page with just a logo, a form entry field, and a submit button. What does it do? Only one way to find out. Some call that brilliant – I call it mean. The only reason we all tolerate it at all is because we were trained to. But that only works once – to compete, you have to offer users a better experience.
Google was not a success because their homepage was sparse. They were a success because they brought a better technique to solving a real world problem, and didn’t ever go off-message. And partly because it didn’t take much explaining, and partly because they were the scrappy underdog, and partly because they were going against the design trend of the time, their homepage was utterly bereft of any hint of design.
The lesson startups should learn is that, if those conditions are exactly the same for them – if they’ve got a red hot new technology that solves a real problem and is so dead simple that users will instinctively understand it without instruction – then by all means, copy Google. Create that perfect, sparse, Zen-like, no-explanation homepage, man.
But if you are entering a crowded marketplace, and you’re doing something a little bleeding edge, something a little newfangled, something your mom or dad might not see the value in without your explaining … in other words, if you live in the real world, you can’t expect people to understand your product when all you give them is a logo and a blank form.
The Cult of Google
Ever heard of a Cargo Cult? During World War II, supplies were air-dropped to soldiers on Pacific Islands. The natives saw this as miraculous – food falling from the sky! When the war was over and the soldiers departed, the islanders repeated the things they’d seen. They built wooden altars that resembled runways and control towers. They wore wooden earphones and waved wooden landing signals. They thought that if they did what they’d seen soldiers do, the food would come parachuting down again.
Seems crazy, right? But it’s no different than search engines copying Google’s design, somehow hoping it’ll bring showers of cash. Just look at the recently redesigned Ask.com. Where there once was a friendly butler, there to lend a hand, now there’s just a logo and a search box. Where there once was a differentiating characteristic and an interesting (albeit kind of silly) brand, now there’s just another pale imitation of the market leader. How can a site like Ask prove to its users that it’s better than Google when they’re obviously changing their design to be more like it? It’s clear who’s leading, and who’s playing catch-up.
And it’s not just Ask.com. Take any half-serious search engine like A9 or Microsoft’s new Live search engine. They all copy Google’s user interface: Logo, form, button. Why are they so afraid of giving their users a little context?
Something Completely Different
When I redesigned Technorati, I felt strongly that if we copied Google’s structure, users would expect a Google-like experience. But Technorati is a fundamentally different search engine: the results are blog posts sorted by time, not websites sorted by relevance. If a user expected an experience like Google, they’d walk away unfulfilled. So Technorati had to reset some user expectations.
We did that by adding text and context. The text took some time to explain what Technorati did (assuming everyone will “get it” is a classic startup mistake). The context showed example content. The best way to indirectly teach users is to provide them with excellent examples. In this case, we chose to show the top recent search terms and tags. That way, if you were suffering from input anxiety, and didn’t know what to search for, you could jump in using what the crowd thought was hot.
This made it clear, right from the first page, that Technorati was different. It reset the expectations that users came to the site with. And best of all, the users loved the top searches feature, sometimes coming back to the site many times a day to see what was hot. I was happy to see the recently launched blog search engine Sphere provide some context the same way.
The Question to Ask
If you’re ever tempted to copy Google’s sparse interface, or have a client who says, “Well, Google did it this way, so they must be right,” tell them that copying Google says two things about you:
- You don’t care enough about your users to bother talking to them about why they should care about you (and, therefore, they won’t)
- You’re as unoriginal as the guy selling knockoff handbags on the corner, so it’s probably best to just avoid eye contact altogether.
So I beg you, the next time you’re faced with a design decision, don’t ask “What would Google do?” Instead ask, “What would the people who use our product totally love?”
Answer that and Google might just have competition someday.
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Dare not say more, I totally disagree.
Great article Derek.
I think the question should be not “What would Google do?” but instead “How do Google think?” which falls back onto their original mission statement and core values (i.e. “Don’t Be Evil”).
This at least will force you to extrapolate further than just the ‘interface’ and focus on what gives the end user their best value for time spent on site.
Good tip also on spelling out exactly what your site intends. I remember the first time I went to Technorati, it took a little bit of rethinking to ‘get’ what it was all about. Now that it is familiar and comfortable, I dont even think about it…
Devan
[If you] have a client who says, “Well, Google did it this way, so they must be right,”
I don’t know what clients you have, but most clients I encounter seem to want every single piece of pointless information they have on the site. Sometimes, you need to reference well known sites like Google that have the design and UI spot on to show that they don’t need all this extra fluff around the site to be successful - that a tidy, clean UI is lot more powerful than an information overload.
Completely agree about Live.com, A9, et al. being though, their new designs smack of Google-copying
It was a good read until Technorati was mentioned.
Technorati is not the bes design for search type site, the placement for the ads is just wrong, contradicting your article you should have followed google by putting the ads on the side, away from the content.
The future breakthroughs in search will be on the results page, not the query page.
There is still so much more to do with search, and Google could be tossed out of the top spot if a clever competitor figured out better ways to:
- Search images, audio, video
- Search across languages
- Search the deep web (databases that are on the web but inaccessible to spiders)
- Improve the relevancy of the results
- Improve the “Results” navigation
Great article!
Although I do agree in most points you made in the case where Google screwed up the interface I do disagree that their approach isn’t a good one (Adding only a text box on the homepage).
A search engine doesn’t have to have lots of information, it has to get straight to the point. Users want something that’s easy to use and gets the work done immidiately - I’m sure you wouldn’t want to go on a website thats full of information that you’re not going to be looking at. Google has made their homepage simple and it’s there for one thing which is their aim, search the web.
Good read, although I think the advice at the end is a bit ironic.
don’t ask “What would Google do?” Instead ask, “What would the people who use our product totally love?”
FYI: a huge flashing, moving ad block in the middle of your content block on your front page is not what your users want (Re: technorati.com).
just another person who disagrees.
not with others copying google of course,
that’s silly.
perhaps google is not good with design (althought i like gmail a lot) but the barebones search query page with its japanese minimalism is the best thing that happened to the late nineties web.
minimalism has its drawbacks, but it’s like using white color:
you can’t lose with it.
Wow, where do I begin? First off I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to hear from another self described designer the blatant misuse of the term “design” much less the inconsistent use of it in one’s own article. Design and visual design are not interchangeable terms. Visual design equates more to style while design describes the process by which the solution to a problem is formed. And you are a web designer? Wow, I wonder if Douglas Bowman would agree with you. You know, the guy that worked on the Google calendar interface, the Adaptive Path site, the Blogger.com site, the Wired news site, and a number of other notable projects. Frustrating to me is the obvious lack of knowledge the author possesses on the subject and the fact that this slipped through the hands of the editors.
Ok, off my soapbox. A more meaningful article with a more clear message might have focused on Google’s lack of polished visual design and styling and an investigation into why, in spite of lovely visual design, the service has succeeded. Then the author might have proposed some suggestions and/or ways to talk about how a Google-style approach to a Web interface is not necessarily ideal for all.
I think there is a middle ground here and it goes to show the importance of good design and information architecture.
I agree that a logo and one liner doesn’t cut it in all cases but content needs to be structured properly and not over-used or it won’t be used, by users.
But bottom line is quality of the product, if Google wasn’t able to give me my intended result on the 1st page 85% of the time, I would still be on Yahoo.
Interesting read. Another issue that I’ve never understood about Google’s home page is why the HTML is so bad. The W3C validator finds 50 errors! On a page that simple. Would be easy to fix, but would add a few bytes to the file. Why they don’t do it is beyond me. Are they trying to save on bandwidth costs? I’ve never figured Google to be strapped for cash…
What made Google my search engine of choice was its speed, pure and simple. You could load Google, do a search, pick your result, and be off on the target site before you’d even finish loading the front page of one of the ridiculous portals like Infoseek and Lycos. Even AltaVista, which used to be the fastest to load, had acquired a lot of bloat by that time.
I agree with your general thesis, that you shouldn’t just do what Google does to be successful. But you seem to have entirely missed why Google was such a no-brainer choice even when it first started. And yes, it is its design that made it better.
I love Google’s design. I love the quick loading, simple, clean *goodness* I see at Google. I love that their logo changes to indicate holidays and birthdays of important people. I wish that the rest of the world would make it as simple to get to where I want to go, rather than make my eyes bleed. Hemingway used to say: “the easy part is putting the words on paper; The hard part is gettting rid of everything else that isn’t necessary.”
Wow. I completely echo “Shhh”s comment above. I think this writer really missed the point. Yet ANOTHER article are why Google’s design is this or that or the other is really not something I expected to read on this site. I’ve been pleased so far, but this article is amateur at best.
You go and make your “pretty” version of Google. Have fun with that. Google will go on giving people what they want. Results.
I remember when Google first came out — WAY before they were “popular”. I was attracted to the simplicity and sparseness of their design. I think the conclusions you draw are just silly.
I agree, er, with the disagreements.
I don’t know why most designers pick Google as a poorly designed website. Yes, it’s missing some of the ribbons and bows of a few other sites out there, but damn if it doesn’t communicate its message and instruction clearly.
- Type in the box
- Hit “Search”
Bingo. The first time I used Google (this was way before I got interested in web design) I was blown away by a sudden desire to actually use the internet. Everything else seemed to tell me what to look for (Yahoo’s homepage, for example, although it’s a little better now); Google was the first that said, “Hey man, it’s cool. What do you want to look for?”
In the end, isn’t that what good design is all about?
Again, people forget some simple truths:
-Google is in business to make money
-Google designs its site so that it most effectively makes money
-Google gets so much traffic that if something doesn’t work, they quickly know about it
Hence the design is perfect for their business objectives.
I think Google’s design is pretty good. There’s very little on there that shouldn’t be there and it’s never confusing for anyone to use. Surely the success of the design is reflected in the positive usibility of the site.
I do agree with the author’s view that everyone shouldn’t just copy Google. Ask Jeeves had a nice unique brand and effective TV ads but have decided to drop anything that made them unique in favour of falling into the void left by Google. The reason why Ask Jeeves wasn’t a success was because the search was inferior. Instead of re-branding they should have invested more in their search technology.
I agree that the issues raised here are pretty right on. But I also have to agree that Technorati is *not* a good example for the counterpoint. Technorati is a mess! It has an interesting visual identity and personality that sets it apart, true, but the pages are way too busy, cluttered, and lacking in a simple visual hierarchy.
In response to “But Google was successful in spite of their design, not because of it.” I’d have to say that I think that might be partially inaccurate.
Back in the day, when I still thought Front Page was cool and I made my living fooling Infoseek into ranking pages to my liking, I remember being shown Google. Google’s simple interface was exactly what I wanted - I wanted to FIND things. I didn’t want tons of stupid AP news or links to AOL freebies or tons of flashing gifs - I wanted a search box. And Google gave it to me. I think that approach was a brilliant marketing decision, making Google synonymous with searching the Internet.
I make a point of going to Google’s homepage when I can, even though I’ve got all the Firefox toolbar goodies - I go there to see what important day their calendar/logo says it is.
I do have a problem with the AdWords display - it’s just ugly and I’ve yet to see a customization that wasn’t pretty yucky looking. But, for advertising, it ain’t half bad.
I love Google. As a company and a leader in the industry I obsess over, they’re great in my book. I want a Google media center attached to my Google OS computer system, bluetoothed to my GooglePalm. Hell, I want Google in my car.
So ffffppppptttt!
;)
@spacedz,
The query page (www.google.com) is relatively simple. The results page is not (and results are the whole point). Many people:
- Don’t understand what sponsored links are
- Don’t understand how Google results are determined
- Think the integrity of the Google search algorithm is compromised because “Google accepts money for ads.”
- Can’t refine their searches (please don’t mention the “Advanced Search” page).
Google’s search algorithm is impressive. But the interface is still in the stone age.
[…] What Would Google Do? - Derek Powazek has some more great design advice over on Vitamin. In short - be original and design for your audience and do not emulate Google. […]
I have to disagree with you on this.
Google was and still is succesfull due to the simplicity or their services.
Google started as a search engine and that is still their biggest service so why have their main webpage full of other information, links, etc… if the people who go there go there specifically to search something?
They kept is straight and simple that’s part of their success.
Restructure of their main webpage would be irrelevant to me I use google for search, gmail.google.com for email, the calendar is a simple url also.
Google is fine as he is and simplicity is a part of design and a part they managed better then anyone.
And we were not trained to accept anything, the human being is constantly wanting more and better and google with his “stone age” design still manages to give it all.
I agree that the results page is far more important than the actual search landing page. The the query string is the API (
q=men+who+look+like+kenny+rogers). The UI possibilities for this API have multiplied with the popularity and efficacy of search to include browser toolbars, bookmarklets, etc. I imagine many (most?) people access Google results without ever visiting the home page.I don’t agree with what you’ve written. You’ve made a lot of bold claims, but I don’t know how you can back them up. VERY opinionated article - but I don’t think you’re write about everything.
I dunno about the rest of the world, but years ago when I was still forming my search engine habits, I decided on google because of their UI, not inspite of it.
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Very nice article. I can’t say that I agree with every statement that you have made, but your overall gist of the article, I completely understand where you’re coming from.
Jake
I agree that companies need to find their own design instead of copying google’s. But one thing that attracted me to the search engine was the fact that it was more pleasing to the eye. A lot of people are realizing however that less is more with design.
The websites you showed as examples are far too busy and this is why no one uses them, they suck big time. Maybe they should of copied Google, people want either minimal or relevant.
I can’t say I ever really cared about the “quality of results” when making my choice to use Google. All the search engines are good for finding what I want.
I have to say that I started using Google due to the simplicity of its design. It had one function: to search the web. Just go there, type in your query, and hit enter. Done.
No matter how fast your connection is, your browser is going to render it in the same time, regardless. Google “just comes up.”
As the guy who spent 4 intense months working on understanding the user experience of the Ask.com redesign (and rebrand), I’d like to give some context.
Our business is built on frequency and retention. In ‘99 - ‘00, we spent a bunch of money marketing the butler and the “just type in a question” thing. Turns out asking questions serves a different user need than search, with much less frequency. So, lots of people would come, but only when they would think of their information need in terms of a question. (”I love Ask Jeeves–I went there six months ago to find out what the story is behind the tooth fairy!!!”).
In addition, it set up expectations of the technology that could not be met. We’d get queries like “I lived in Brooklyn in the Fifties. There was this hospital, St. Mary’s, and I grew to fall in love with a nurse there. How can I get in touch with her?” The unreliable natural language experience combined with lame “monetization” moves turned off some. Others did do keyword searches or asked more common (and easier to answer!) questions–we did keep growing, and people did come back, but much more slowly and on longer cycles than other “search” engines.
Research showed us that the “oh, that’s that place where you ask the butler!” mental model was memorable, but this would always limit frequency. So we decided to risk removing Jeeves.
Via ethnographic studies, eyetracking, interactive evaluations and many hours of usability sessions, we talked with over 2,000 people in the US and UK, and iterated design weekly over the 4 months. We listened to everyone from current daily users to those who tried it once in 1998 and have blown it off since to fresh faces.
We knew that users could see the site’s context easily: the toolbox on the right gives a sense of the breadth of information searchable–while the form and button center screen tells users “Web search.” I don’t think Google got this wrong. Users are very focused on getting to results, and appreciate that lack of distraction.
For those familiar with the Ask displaying the character, they tend to scan for him and find the toolbox in his stead–an area focused on their needs. That’s customizable, too. I doubt Google would put something like this on their homepage.
Much of the differentiation from Google comes on the results page. Where Google puts ads in the right-hand column, we have a user-focused tool to narrow or expand your search focus for about 60% of searches. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ does a good run down of the key differences between the new Ask and Google.
Users do notice and use this stuff. It’s there (in the interaction with the search results) that they pick up on what’s different.
The search relevance is good and usually equal to Google for many searchers, but does need to improve. We’re spending a lot this year on freshness and deeper (and wider) crawling.
Anyway, this is all just a platform for us to improve and differentiate our search experience. We weren’t able to do that with the butler, as he fixed a mental model for the site that was different than search.
What Would Google Do…
Google deserves a lot of credit. They built a better search engine and have kept it one step ahead of the competition for seven years. They reinvented online advertising with AdWords and gave everyone with a website the ability to make a couple of buck…
great advertisement … er … article!
Though I agree with some of your propositions, it’s not for the reasons you give.
It’s silly to think that Google’s site design is confusing–and it’s ridiculous to think that technorati is less confusing. Besides you, I doubt there is anyone insulted or confused by the google interface, as you say.
Sites that ape google’s minimalist design commit the fallacy of assuming that web pages essentially perform the same function. Mimic the industry leader and, they reason, you’ll have an industry leading website too. In your analysis, however, you make the same fallacy by assuming that google must follow the design principles of your fairly unrelated references. In fact, some websites benefit from a google approach and others don’t. This is obvious if we look at other UI decisions in computers.
For example, imagine an operating system function that searched your hard drive… except that everytime you brought it up it would tell you about your system preferences, link you to your printer settings, ask if you wanted to search on the internet, and gave you a dozen other options that had absolutely nothing to do with searching your hard drive!
Anyone would say that that’s probably a pretty bad design. When considering what a good design for an app that searched your hard drive would be, the answer is pretty darn obvious. Not a lot of glitter or gimicks, just a text entry field and a button that initiated the search.
Would you call this mean? Would you prefer for some text that explains, “enter some text then push the search button to search the internet.” followed by a list of popular searches and a rambling page of tangents?
Google was obviously popular because of its design, not in spite of it. In an age of booming computer use–when, at first, the internet was a scary and confusing place–google’s singular focus on search was both reassuring and utterly graspable.
I completely disagree with this article. I don’t know about you, but to me, web design isn’t about creating the most complex page out there. What if you had an author that wrote a 5000 page novel?
Is it necessarily better then a simple 500 page novel? No. This is a rather crude example, but hopefully you get my point.
Designing a web site is about creating a site that’s attractive and functional. Your aim is that, and only that. It isn’t a contest to see how much information you can whack visitors over the head with.
The biggest irony is probably that if Google did in fact overhaul its design, there would be internet-wide mutiny. I wouldn’t be surprised if users lost faith in the technology, while advertising-dollar-seekers lost faith in the brand, even if there was no reason to do either.
Google’s branding is not just the “Fisher Price logo”, it’s the entire entry page. Just like Coca-Cola is not merely the cursive font - it’s the red can, too. Like another commenter has pointed out - once you get past that entry page, things cease to be simple. The results page, the Maps, the Gmail interface - all blissfully complex. The advancements going on beyond the cover page speak volumes for the potential, as well as the amount of restraint involved.
Maybe we’re all just a little jealous that we bust our humps to come up with aesthetically pleasing for logos, identities, and web layouts, and we practically feel Google thumbing their noses and fanning their piles of cash at us.
Adding my voice to the dissent. Utterly disagree.
Derek, thanks for the article. But of course you know in my case you preach to the converted.
As for the comments that cite Technorati… I think these people need to understand that redesigning a complex, truly cutting edge website is one thing… having the company then defile their own service with idiotically placed ads after we’ve left the company is something else all together.
But I guess it’s going to be your fault for the next 10 years… because you were the designer.
[…] Update 06-05-16: Und noch ein Artikel zum Google-Design: Derek Powazek (er hat Technorati redesigned) hält es für falsch, das Google-Layout zu kopieren. Es sei zu unpersönlich und ließe den Benutzer ein ganz spezielles Suchverahlten erwarten. […]
The comments on this article remind me of a time when no one had a memory past the dominance of Altavista. Circa 1997.
In short, you have no memory of a pre-Google internet.
Imagine it, people. It existed.
And there will be an internet after Google. Get over it.
The net is about what works. If all you can imagine is Google, you are yesterday. Something will beat Google. There is a better idea. It’s good. It’s about upping the ante.
It’s disappointing to see the obedience, the complaince of the posters on this thread.
If you can’t kick ass and make the next thing, sit down and give up.
I know that almost everybody disagrees with the author, but I don’t. If we all look what he wanted to say: “What would the people who use our product totally love?”. That’s the key sentence. Forget about Google or Technorati. I think that he wants us to be more creative and intuitive, not copy other sites just to make better profit. I’m not a designer myself, but programmer, but I think that a good designer can reinvent a design a make it more accessible to users. Anyway, it’s all about to what kind of people we are selling something. Don’t just think about the money. Think about how can you overcome the Google or any other site with your own ideas.
I started reading this article thinking it may give some insight into how Google could improve and what we could expect from the next generation search engine, but I was unimpressed with the attack in the look and feel criticism… this is IMHO the one great thing Google has done right! I have used all the search engines at one time or another and it is the SPEED of Google I love, the fact that it doesn’t take 2 seconds to load… if you are searching a lot then the half a second it saves is appreciated, believe me!
I don’t usually contribute criticism, but this just strikes me as an article for the sake of an article… sorry!
[…] read more | digg story […]
“You don’t care enough about your users to bother talking to them about why they should care about you (and, therefore, they won’t)”
Well said.
It’s very true.
Really interesting article, thanks Derek
[…] in What Would Google Do, Derek Powazek makes some interesting claims: […]
I think some people here missed the point of Derek’s article: that he isn’t bashing Google for the (lack of) design of their interface, but that he is bashing those companies who copy Google’s design simply because Google is the market leader.
As many here have said, they use Google for the results, not the interface. Which is, kinda, Derek’s point (I think;)).
I’m a Google devotee but this article in terms of design is bang on the money. Google don’t have to quite yet, but should make the interface with all their products including the huge number of beta products users, a pleasure rather than a challenge.
I don’t think the author is saying the Google has a bad interface or that Google succeeded “despite their interface, not because of it.” He is saying that the reflexive desire to make everything minimalist simply because that’s what Google did isn’t healthy.
I think he’s right.
Don’t listen to Google and don’t listen to Jakob Neilsen. Heck, don’t listen to Derek Powazek. Listen to your users (and talk to ‘em a LOT).
http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/archives/frugal_google/
do view source
[…] Vitamin Features - What Would Google Do? an article about googles lack of design and how everyone else is ripping this lack of design […]
Written on a page that looks like Google’s but with more color.
If all Google had done was return better results, but with the same craptastic interfaces that Lycos, Yahoo, et. al. had, I might not have abandoned the others.
The reality is that the author is way off - Google’s lack of distracting crap on their front page was a welcome return to the original web which let the user get at the data _they_ wanted, instead of being forced to wade through the crap the host wanted them to see.
Google’s approach was all www - the others were TV on a computer.
So Google’s desing was a huge part of why they won.
While I see everyone’s points here, I thought someone should mention that nowhere on Google’s homepage does it say “you can search the internet here.” It does say ‘web’ and ‘google search,’ but if I’ve never heard of Google (believe it or not, there are people out there…), it would take a minute to figure what the page searches for (what the heck is a google?!) - and as all designers know, a minute’s longer than you have for most users. I think that’s what this author meant (along with the whole ‘don’t copy Google just because’ thing…).
I really enjoyed reading this article. It got me thinking about a lot of what I have been hearing from suit people, and their ideas on how to make their companies succesfull. Which is more of a paper tiger aproach, like what Derek was explaining in his artcle.
Thanks for the article.
I like Google and what they do (most of the time). All I know is if I HAD to use MSN for more then one day I would kill my self! As for coping Google, I am all for it if you can pull it off.
I concur with the consensus and disagree with what was said in this article. Google uses visual design perfectly, just sparingly. Google steps its foot forward with strong functionality first and incorporates visual design as needed. If google is being copied/looked up too it’s not because they are leaders in the visual design arena, everyone knows that. It’s because they are leaders in the web UI design space and should be credited for such leadership.
[…] Vitamin Features » What Would Google Do? by Technorati desinger. (tags: business design google usability webdesign toread) […]
“Google rules the web today because their technology was so great, so unique back then, that users were willing to overlook their hostile user experience.”
I really doubt that anyone has ever considered Google’s user experience to be ‘hostile’ - especially due to its lack of visual design or instruction.
I think you’re missing out something rather important in terms of interface design: user intuition.
People (even those who aren’t computer literate) know how to use a Cash Machine / ATM because the interface is intuitive. There are no instructions on how to use the buttons to the left and right of the screen to navigate through the options. Any such instruction would get in the way, and slow the transaction down.
I think Web Standards play an important part. They provide a text input box with a flashing cursor indicating that people can type stuff there, and a submit button that looks pressable. Don’t underestimate the ability of these simple devices to allow people to use web tools intuitively.
In the late nineties and early 2000s, when words like “portal” and “stickiness” were thrown around like so much unwise investment, every search engine piled layer upon layer of crap on their homepage, … But Google … remained pristine through it all.
ok, so far so good.
Google was successful in spite of their design, not because of it.
But doesn’t this assertion completely contradict where that first bit was heading?
In other words, people didn’t overlook the “hostile” UI because of the great technology. People loved the uncluttered UI as a contrast to the hostile “GET YOUR FREE SMILIES CHECK YOUR WEATHER TRACK YOUR STOCKS” crap of the portal-style search engines.
That’s the received wisdom anyhow.
I think that one sentence (”in spite of”) is pretty much what’s garnered all the disagreements, otherwise, your point (that copying google’s (anti)design as if that’s a shortcut to google’s success, is stupid) is a great one.
Also, thanks to Michael Ferguson, whose response re: ask.com was at least as interesting as the article itself.
Great article and I think the best example of following this strategy is 37 signals
I think the article is a bit on the poor side also. It just does not make much sense.
I think your comparisons to technorati are ridiculous quite frankly. Technorati is very confusing and cluttered how much of this you are responsible for is unclear but the ads aren’t the only downfall of that ui.
Citing your comment on Sphere. To me it looks as though sphere is a hell of alot closer to google than it is to Technorati. I think Sphere pretty much strikes a fine balance unlike Technorati.
Oh and just to add it would be nice to see you reply to the comments here.
It would be interesting to hear what you have to say ….
[…] Vitamin Features » What Would Google Do? So I beg you, the next time you’re faced with a design decision, don’t ask “What would Google do?” Instead ask, “What would the people who use our product totally love?” […]
I love google mainly becuase (and its probably a completely stupid reason, since i’m on a fast Cable connection now) it loads ultra fast since its such light weight.. What more could I ask for?
I think the premise of this article is completely off base. Remember Excite? It was one of the first search big search engines around. The page became an awful dense red mass of links. In contrast, FAR from not communicating to users, Google made an emphatic point with their interface: We do search. Personally, I know this was the main reason I first gravitated towards Google.
As for the digs at the logo, I think it also communicates effectively: it’s friendly, and so simple a child could use it.
Honestly, the author sounds like he has some Google-envy.
“You don’t care enough about your users to bother talking to them about why they should care about you (and, therefore, they won’t)”
I view this with the same kind of skepticism as when a supermarket refers to me as “guest”.
I don’t need to be convinced to care about Google or any other
company/site that provides a helpful and enjoyable service. If the
service being offered cannot speak for itself, a nice design can only
go so far.
Technorati, the example you use, does not at all go too far towards
hassling me, as I was at first afraid you were suggesting designers
do. OTOH, there are probably at least a dozen links on the front page
I’ve never clicked and never will.
I remember first being introduced to Google around Fall, 1999. I was impressed that for almost anything I was thinking of, its first result would be correct.
But like a couple people finally mentioned, what kept me there was its speed. Speed of loading of the home page (before the toolbar), and speed of generating its results. This is by far the most important thing to me.
Furthermore, Google has experimented with its homepage design a bit. One interesting fact is that they considered removing the “I’m feeling lucky” button because nobody uses it. But test audiences were vehemently opposed to it. They just want it there, because they were used to it, and it was “cool” (while admitting they’d never use it).
Google’s in an envious position. Not because of their genius employees and boatloads of cash and market share, but because even if something else comes out that IS better, nobdy is going to switch. Think about it - I am fairly confident that MSN or Yahoo or Ask.com or whatever new search engine comes out tomorrow will deliver results just as good as Google. But #1, why switch, and #2, I really have no way of comparing. It’s not as if I’m going to search for everything on multiple engines just to compare (though maybe I should, for fun).
Seems to me that the only way another search engine can succeed is to somehow get some sort of message out like “Hey, we do A and B better than Google, it’s easy to see A and B when we use our site. Just give us a chance for a few days and you’ll see.” But I’ve never seen anything like this. Just new search engines (and new versions of old search engines) saying they’re good, but I really don’t care or have a way to verify this.
When the US government recently asked all the major search engines for server logs, Yahoo forked them over, but Google said no, earning the admiration of every geek who’s ever searched for a naughty word or two.
Nevermind that when the Chinese government asks for server logs, in a deliberate campaign to find and squelch political dissent (with hard labor prison-camps for dissenters), Google willingly hands them over with no questions asked.
I think there’s still a lot we can learn from Google. Their 20% projects have done a good job to tap creativity from their staff, they have an extremely agile approach to development, and they let market demand drive their product direction rather than creating a pie in the sky annual product roadmap that’s disconnected from reality.
I also agree with Rik Lomas that most companies want to stuff their pages full of unrelated information and image heavy design rather than taking a sparser simpler Google style approach.
Is having a logo and a search box right for every company, of course not, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking at other companies to learn important lessons in addition to talking to our users. They are both important aspects of running a successful business.
I have written an extended response here:
Does Google Succeed Despite Bad Design?
OK, here comes the politically correct comment. Saying that Cargo Cult “Seems crazy, right?” is pretty racist. It would be equally easy to deride any other behaviour or belief system, including your own (whatever that may be). Imagine this: “I visited their country and it’s crazy: they spend most of their waking hours staring silently at a glowing box, pressing a smaller box that’s attached to it and goes click click. Then they go back to their dwelling and stare at another glowing box, except here the smaller box is not attached to it.”
Racist Mike? Heh, only if race had anything to do with it. And yes, we all look pretty crazy — clicking away at our little boxes — to someone who spends his days behind an Ox or knee-deep in a rice paddy. Nevermind just how many different races we have here, all happily clicking away at our little boxes.
Noting a cultural difference — and pointing out just how different it seems, even crazy different, from our own — isn’t racist. Not unless you try to attribute that difference soley to race!
Political correctness wouldn’t be so bad, if it were actually “correct” more often. Tolerance means having a thick skin, not a dull wit.
If design is the solution to a problem, and the problem is me wanting to find pertinent information to any topic I could think of, then Google’s design is nay perfect. Type, click, bam! No distractions. And for those interested in taking advantage of Google services other than searching (which I day say are in the minority, that is, most people use google to search for stuff), click on “more” (which, granted, is pretty ambigous) and bam! a nice neat list of provided services. Hostile? how? … and ugly? I don’t go to Google to satisfy my aesthetic sensibilities, stare at their logo, or obsess over their layout. I come for information, and that’s what I get. How wonderful is that? I think it’d be nice if technorati were more like it in fact: I type into a simple search box, and bam!, I see what’s crackin in the blogosphere. Why all the other stuff?
The strong reactions to this article really surprised me. I love Google, and have written positively about them in the past. I also, in the above article, praised them for staying on target, and critiqued other search engines for getting lost in portal nonsense.
Contrary to the general vibe of the comments here, I was not implying that Google should have a busy, ugly, portalized homepage. In fact, my advice wasn’t aimed at Google at all.
My advice was for the startups of today: Stop copying Google. Just because they’re the most successful search engine of today, doesn’t mean they do everything right. And when it comes to visual, interaction, and experience design, they stand to improve quite a bit.
I chose to focus my critique on their homepage because it’s the most extreme example, and, contrary to some of the comments here, homepages matter. A lot. They’re often create a new user’s first impression of your service.
Don Norman said it better than I did in The truth about Google’s so-called “simplicity”:
“Is Google simple? No. Google is deceptive. It hides all the complexity by simply showing one search box on the main page. The main difference, is that if you want to do anything else, the other search engines let you do it from their home pages, whereas Google makes you search through other, much more complex pages.”
And if you don’t know him, Don Norman is an engineer, cognitive scientist, and the original UI wonk, who’s been writing about this stuff for longer than most of us have been alive.
I didn’t mean to start up yet another round of good design versus anti-design. And I certainly didn’t mean that Google should crowd their interface with marketing gobbledygook. This was about what we, as designers, should learn from Google’s success, and what we shouldn’t.
To Marty: yup, you’re absolutely right, race has nothing to do with it. English is not my first language and I made that mistake before - using “racism” too broadly. And no doubt, the people of Melanesia are not under any immediate threat from web design commentators! However, you will agree with me that no article on Vitamin would ever describe a Christian or Jewish ritual as “seeming crazy”. It’s this difference in sensitivity that I was pointing out.
[…] What Would Google Do? (Vitamin) here’s Derek Powazek’s critique of Google design. He starts off criticising the visual design, but it’s really more an interaction design critique in the end. The overall moral being ‘don’t just copy Google’. For me, I think attacking the search homepage (tags: designcritique google interfacedesign visualdesign search) […]
Jared Spool wrote about Homepage Googlisation in April:
The rationale is this: Google’s home page has a simple search type-in box prominent on their home page, with virtually nothing else. Everybody loves using Google. Therefore, doesn’t everybody want the same simple design on every site they visit?
People are calling this approach Home Page Googlization.
On the surface, the rationale does seem to make sense. Google is an experience that people are very familiar with. It’s the starting point for many trips to the web. Why not transfer that experience to your own site?
If you actually compare the results from the main search engines you find that the results aren’t that different from each other and the battleground has now moved to the brand experience more than the quality of the search results.
Google have found that having the most popular search on the planet doesn’t necessarily help when they want to launch other products. (See how Google Local reverted to Google Maps in spite of the GooglePlan).
Google are now trapped in the “one-box” only search paradigm and they daren’t open up their home page too much or they will see users deserting them because of the loss of their “supposed simplicity.”
Since I re-imagined the Goole experience as Simply Google I have had many discusssion with people about how diverse and fragmented the Google Experience actually is.
Google is the best search engine on the planet, but it could end up being the albatross around the necks of Sergey and Larry if they cannot find a way to provide another way to engage with their users.
A long time ago, I was hired at a search company. I went in thinking, well I can beat google. I’ve been a designer for many many years, and their stuff is okay, but just think how much better it would be if it were designed!
Well, we started doing something that is called variable testing, or bucket testing, or A-B testing (depending on where you work) and we started learning things. Like a long line length doesn’t affedt anything, but making the title 12 pt and the text 10 does.
We always knew google did a lot of testing; what we didn’t know, until we did ourselves is every that single pixel has a purpose. And as we did usability testing, eyetracking, etc, we learned more and more what google did right– and we started to learn what google did wrong. But beleive me, it was never obvious.
So if you are making a search engine, and you can’t afford to do testing, WWGD. Especially if it’s what yahoo, aol, msn, a9 and ask does.
If you are a designer, holding forth on what Google could or could not do, I’d ask you where you got your data? Art school? Or real numbers from real users? I can’t tell you how many “redesings” I’ve seen that would lose Google hundreds of thousands of dollars a year– and provide a worse user experience.
Google was my enemy, but they are my respected enemy.
Learn from your enemies.
I have to admit, when I started reading this article, I was thinking to myself “jeez, what the hell is he talking about? Google’s site design is effectively near-perfect as far as I’m concerned!”
My rationale being that for what they do, the interface is better than any other (at least among those you might call their peers).
I do have to disagree that they succeed in spite of their design. They succeed for many obvious reasons, and one of the strongest is that trimmed, fast-loading, cross-browser layout.
One more thing I must disagree with: They may have been scarce on content once upon a time, but there is no such problem these days. There’s a pretty easy-to-use portal for all of their cool research projects and beta gizmos right there in that “More >>” link. I don’t see how that could be confusing to anyone. It’s a succinct way of saying “Hey, if you want to see what we’ve got cooling in the forge, then here’s where you’ll find it.” without distracting anyone who is only there to do a quick search.
As I approached the half-way point in the article, however, I realized that your intent was probably not that of criticizing Google so much as it was a warning to those who blindly follow the shining examples without considering the contextual nuances.
I can hardly assume that you’re speaking about things you don’t understand, but I get the feeling from this collection of comments that most of us had a bit of trouble with the idea that Google’s design was its problem — as if some brilliant new design is what will really make that Google site REALLY take off!!!
Anyway, I think you get my point. It just kinda seems rather bold (and, um…maybe even silly?) to say some of the things your readers were pretty sure you were saying here. I mean, Google works. It really works well. That’s obvious, and the layout is no mistake.
Layout and graphic designers know that the look and feel of an interface is a lot more important than most people might realize, and there’s no way this knowledge was lost on the people at the big blue G.
I appreciate a good discussion on the subject, and I hope you don’t let the criticism get to you. SEO is part of my somewhat-ambiguous job description, and our discourse is probably our most powerful tool, so thanks for the time and effort spent producing these articles.
Excerpt from Fast Company article (Issue 100, November 2005):
Here is how [Marissa] Mayer [Google’s director of consumer Web products] thinks about the tension between complexity of function and simplicity of design: “Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our way of approaching it closed. It’s simple, it’s elegant, you can slip it in your pocket, but it’s got the great doodad when you need it. A lot of our competitors are like a Swiss Army knife open–and that can be intimidating and occasionally harmful.”
It would be lovely if Google’s corporate mythology included an enchanting tale to account for the birth of this pristine marvel. But the original home-page design was dumb luck. In 1998, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were consumed with writing code for their engine. Brin just wanted to hack together something to send queries to the back end, where the cool technology resided. Google didn’t have a Web master, and Brin didn’t do HTML. So he designed as little as he could get away with.
[…] http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/what-would-google-do […]
Take your business goals, align them with your users goals, make a web site that hits those goals and your sorted!
Disagree.
Google started off by doing one thing really well and they made it easy for people to do it. No needless clutter. No guesswork. Because of that, my grandmother can “google”.
I guess you could theorize that it was unintentional - or perhaps subconcious - but I doubt it: the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.
Well, after Doug Bowman’s announcement today, it seems Google and fantastic design will soon be synonymous…
[…] Does Google succeed despite bad design? and What would Google do? are a bit of an argument about whether Google knows what it’s doing in designing its services. Joshua Porter of User Interface Engineering argues that it does, saying “To suggest that it is poorly designed is to ignore the fact that everybody uses it. […] The problem is that [critics] are focusing on the wrong page. They’re focusing on the Google homepage when they should be focusing on the results page.” […]
Agreed. I’ve always felt Google did the “simplicity” part right, but it seems like their simple interface is wrongly interpreted as being a great design. It’s simple, but I’ve never considered it attractive.
I don’t believe the author meant that the GOOGLE site was badly designed, just simple, straightforward and to the point…
All too often people forget the principle of KISS - Keep it simple stupid… it works, its effective, it gives access to people whatever their educational background and it is NOT FULL OF JUNK.
Whilst I agree not everyone needs to copy the Google format, 99% of websites I visit have FAR TOO MUCH on a page to make it worthwhile staying too long and I confess that includes my own and recently I returned to just plain old HTML and a few bits of Javascript to clean the site up and make it more USER FRIENDLY and obvious to visitors what the site was about…
The one point I keep in mind for design is simply… It’s about giving the user the right information at the right time. Google does a great job of that. Want to search? Here, type a word and click this button. I’m provided with the right information (or tool) at the right time. I think that’s been Google’s approach from the beginning. It’s about knowing your end user and Google understood that from the get go. However, unless your service is as simple (meaning the end users need) as search, it’s going to be too little. This approach works for Google because its about one result… my search results. Look, give them the meat and potatoes first. You can always add more later, right? The author’s article is about understanding your end user at each step in your design. Simple might work, might not. However, just because Google does it doesn’t mean it’s right for your user. Say it to yourself when you design. The right information at the right time. The right information at the right time… You’ll find yourself stripping away the garbage and be left with a lean, mean and loveable UI. Your users will reward you over and over.
[…] I think the design of your website matters a lot. When people express terms like “an appealing design”, they are actually talking about the layout. Design is more concerned with usability. A post titled What would Google do Derek Powazek says: Imagine a web page with just a logo, a form entry field, and a submit button. What does it do? Only one way to find out. Some call that brilliant – I call it mean. The only reason we all tolerate it at all is because we were trained to. But that only works once – to compete, you have to offer users a better experience. […]
[…] I first heard of Derek through an article he did for Vitamin. I also recently heard an interview with his wife, Heather Champ of Flickr, on the Web 2.0 Show. They both just seem like very fun people, and Derek was a great presenter. […]
nice article. was useful to me. But, the headline fooled me. i thought - u wrote something about google’s future plannings!
[…] How important are people to design? Technorati design is the topic of What Would Google Do?. I had to laugh while reading it. I remember asking something similar, before Google became King. The question used to be - “What Would Amazon Do?” […]
[…] Why do so many people think that imitating Google is the only thing they need to do to be successful?read more | digg story […]
What Would Google Do? nothing.
i disagree
thanks for great article.
Google’s in an envious position. Not because of their genius employees and boatloads of cash and market share, but because even if something else comes out that IS better, nobdy is going to switch. Think about it - I am fairly confident that MSN or Yahoo or Ask.com or whatever new search engine comes out tomorrow will deliver results just as good as Google. But #1, why switch, and #2, I really have no way of comparing. It’s not as if I’m going to search for everything on multiple engines just to compare (though maybe I should, for fun).
Heh