You'll be noticing differences at Google now. Well, with the .com version you will - the UK version is currently staying the same. The little options (news, images etc) are gone from above the search box and are shifted top left. The 'more' button gives you options for searching a wider variety of Google options - they're finally trying to bring everything together, and this makes a lot of sense. The simplicity of the interface, which is the power of Google is also the disadvantage, in that it's very difficult for them to show everyone what they've got. This is an attempt to overcome this problem.
They're also moving to what they call 'universal search' - which is bringing together information from a wide variety of sources - the kind of thing that AskX is doing for example. Searches will automatically bring up links to other search options - try Python and you'll get access to search in Blogs, books, groups and code. So - not actually that universal at this stage - simply pointing out other tools you can use to search.
Google is also playing around with Google Experimental which lets you try out new things, such as timelines, keyboard shortcuts, left handed search navigation (a bit like Ask) and right hand contextual search navigation. With these last two you're given the option of then doing on and searching for more information, rather than having it presented to you as a blended, holistic search, which I personally find much more preferable.
You can read the press release from Google. Danny has written about Universal Search and it's an indepth article that goes into considerable detail and is a must read.
And if you don't want any of the extras not even sponsored links then use this URL
http://www.google.com/search?output=googleabout
db
Posted by: David Bradley | May 17, 2007 at 11:25 AM