Is Google losing the plot?
By Gerry McGovernGoggle has achieved its position by delivering great quality search results really quickly through a very simple interface.
I was at dinner with some friends when one of them said: "Did you see the Google homepage today? They've put a background image on it!" Everyone looked on in disbelief. "Look, I'll show you," and he loaded Google on his iPhone. "Oh! It's not there now." There was a sigh of relief.
As I walked home I was worried. Google is supposed to test everything, and maybe they were about to introduce a background because they had found that that's what customers actually wanted. And if that was the case then it would undermine a lot of the ideas I had developed over the years.
I thought these ideas were based on understanding what people actually do on the Web; not what they say they do in focus groups. Not what they think they do. What they actually do.
The core of what I had learned was that people are highly impatient and very, very task-focused. They want clarity, not persuasion. They often respond negatively to old school marketing hero shots and fluffy, warm, meaningless language.
Google is the perfect service for this new customer. We love Google because it is unashamedly a search engine. It has come across as having this relentless focus on helping us find exactly what we need as quickly and easily as possible.
I remember the excitement when Google launched. The other search engines were getting more and more cluttered and filled with graphic ads. Rumors were circulating that these search engines were selling placements in the actual search results.
Google changed all that. It put the customer first, not the advertiser. Even as it rapidly expanded its services it kept its homepage really simple. There must have been intense pressure from these new services to get on the homepage. But most of the time Google resisted.
One of the reasons Google seemingly introduced this new background was because of "Bing envy." Bing (the Microsoft search engine) has a big colorful background. Well, that's one of the reasons I don't use Bing. I need to search. I don't need distractions. To me, Bing doesn't come across as serious about search. It feels like a brochure more than a search engine.
There was an immediate backlash on the Web to the Google background. Within no time "remove Google background" became a top 10 search in Google. (Consider how many millions of searches it requires to get into the top 10.)
Twitter went wild with tweets like: "BLOODY GOOGLE! Is there a way to NOT have a blooming background picture?!," one tweet said. "Glad I'm not the only one who hates the ridiculous Google Background Image. I'm sick of having stuff thrust on me like this," said another.
Google claimed this was a 24 hour experiment. It stopped it in less than 10 hours and basically apologized. At least Google still listens and responds to its customers. I use Google all the time but the day it stops simplifying my life is the day I'll move.
Gerry McGovern
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