Google's tweak of its Google Search page appearance has garnered a wide ranging reaction from users, many of whom are calling for a return to the old style.
The news was announced by Jon Wiley, Lead Designer for Google Search, on his Google + page on March 12. Immediately, those in his circle of friends began weighing in on the change. The basic premise behind the refresh was to give the desktop version of Google Search the same look and feel as is found on mobile and tablet devices.
Wiley detailed the changes as increasing the size of the result titles, removing the underlines from the search titles and evening out the line heights. He said he felt this improves the pages readability and creates an overall cleaner appearance. The ad labels were also ported over from the mobile search look making the multi-device experience more consistent, he said.
"Improving consistency in design across platforms makes it easier for people to use Google Search across devices and it makes it easier for us to develop and ship improvements across the board," Wiley wrote.
By using his Google + account Wiley opened himself up to immediate accolades and disses from his circle of friends. And they wasted no time giving their opinion.
The user comments run the gamut from those who really liked the change to others stating their disappointment and some going to so far as to say Google rarely improves itself when it makes changes.
However, the vast majority offered interesting insights.
Dropping the underlines received the most comments with many people noting that the page just does not look quite right without those lines. The underline does appear when the user hovers over the headline giving it the old hyperlink look.
Others were not happy with the new search title font size calling it ugly, too big and jarring.
While many folks said the update gave the search pages a cleaner look, others were upset that fewer stories seemed to be appearing per page and others missed the page preview feature that allowed readers a glimpse of the page when they hovered over the link.
Wiley did try to engage a few of his friends, particularly over technical issues that Google might have to resolve, but generally he let everyone vent or applaud the changes.
