Dear Google,
Today you made your search page personalizations default without an opt-out option. This was likely to draw attention to the new background feature as so many of your products have features no one has herd of. This is to be expected since you offer so many products, with so many great features. In the purest sense this move makes sense, especially if this is a one day only move and the option will return to opt-in tomorrow. For one day, I can deal; all be it by using a different search engine for today (shout-out to Duck Duck Go, a great search site btw..with a minimal homepage ala old Google).
One blogger over at Pcworld posted his confusion over the “outrage” of your move, and he really doesnt seem to understand why this is a big deal. True many reactions are way over the top, and really this in no way make Google a Bing clone…not by a long shot, Bing is annoying on so many levels the least of which being the start page. For me this comes down to function.
I use a Nokia Tablet, and I have spoken to several netbook owners, along with others with embedded processors, and the reaction is the same: it takes a noticeably longer to load these images over the old Google home page. My tablet has a full fledged browser and no mobile search as a result; I get the full Google experience. It is older, and I have given up on watching video on it…but having to wait to load a page that I know can come up in less than three seconds is maddening.
In the future I would ask that you remember that Google is the gatekeeper to the web for many and that those people do not always access your page under optimal conditions. I am sure both your developers and the blogger at PCworld are accessing the homepage with fairly new hardware, broadband internet, a full sized screen, and a pretty modern graphics card. Though that is more normative there are still millons of older computers, pdas, early tablets,embedded devices, and folks on slower connections. In the future don’t forget us.
Thanks, Alltech
Filed under: Interwebs Tagged: | background, bing, duck duck go, google, home page, homepage, nokia, opt-in, opt-out, pcworld, pictures, search, start page, tablet
