Google Tests a New Interface for Google Suggest

Cameron Beyer spotted an experiment that simplifies the interface for Google Suggest and adds Google's search buttons below the list of suggestions.


This is not the only experiment for Google Suggest: other changes include the direct access to the top result for navigational queries, direct answers and suggestions from your search history.

Since many people replaced the address box from their browsers with Google's search box, it's natural for Google to make the search box more powerful and to provide even faster access to search results. If Google's search box first became ubiquitous through Google Toolbar, then Google Toolbar's search box evolved into Chrome's Omnibox, the added functionality should now be included in Google's homepage.

New Google Favicon

Google changed its favicon last year and many people said that the new one was ugly. Probably this the reason why Google decided to use another favicon starting from today. The new favicon uses all the colors from Google's logo, while keeping the same lowercase "g".

Marissa Mayer's description from last year is very appropriate. "We wanted something distinctive and noticeable (...). We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn't date itself." Adam Howard, a reader of this blog, thinks that the new favicon "looks like a mini paint-by-numbers".

Here are all the three Google favicons, starting with the new one, followed by the simple favicon added last year and the initial Google favicon, which is still my favorite:



Update: Marissa Mayer tells the story of the new favicon:

"Back in June, we rolled out a new favicon — the small icon that greets you when you access Google on your URL bar or your bookmarks list — and we encouraged our users to submit their ideas for this important piece of Google branding. We were impressed by the volume of submissions we received, and today we are happy to introduce a new Google favicon inspired by those submissions by our users. André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil, submitted the design that inspired our new favicon: . His placement of a white 'g' on a color-blocked background was highly recognizable and attractive, while seeming to capture the essence of Google."

{ Thanks, Daniel, John and Adam. }

Google Simplifies the Format for Video Results

After removing the useful option to play videos inline*, Google no longer displays the duration and the rating for universal video results. Here's the same YouTube video in 2007, when Google launched universal search, and today. The only difference between video results and regular web pages is that videos have thumbnails and the options to find similar pages and to see the cached version aren't included.


I'm not sure if the rating of a video is very useful, but the duration, the date when it was uploaded and the number of views might be helpful. Google shows similar information for scientific papers, forums and this approach could be extended to other categories of web pages.

* The option to play videos results without opening a new page is available at Yahoo Search.

New Google Favicon

Many people noticed a small change: Google has a new favicon. A favicon is a small image that is generally used to reflect the identity of a web site. You can find it in the address bar, in your browser's tabs, in the list of bookmarks or in some feed readers like Bloglines.

Google's favicon is hosted at google.com/favicon.ico and it's a 16x16 pixels image, a standard size for favicons. Google replaced the upper-case "G" in blue border, green and red borders with a lower-case purple "g" in a rounded corner rectangle.


The first time when I saw the new favicon at Google Image Search, I thought there was something wrong with my browser's cache or I typed an incorrect address. Google's new favicon is less cheerful and comforting, but it makes a lot of sense: the small g is a symbol for infinity (∞). A googol (10¹⁰⁰) is just a poor approximation for the huge amount of information that needs to be indexed, organized and made useful by Google.


{ Thanks for the tip, Louis, John and Aleksandr. }

Update: If you want the old favicon back, try this Greasemonkey script (requires Greasemonkey for Firefox, Opera or a userscript plug-in for other browsers).

Update 2: Search Engine Land has an official position from Google. "We recognized there was a need for a Google icon that would better work across multiple applications including web, mobile and client applications. We felt the small 'g' had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it's simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward."

Update 3: Google says this is not the final favicon. "We tried in total more than 300 permutations [some of them are displayed below]. It was much harder than we thought at first. We wanted something distinctive and noticeable, so we aimed toward transparency or semi-transparency, so the image would have a more distinctive noticeable shape than just a block. We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn't date itself." If you have some suggestions for Google's favicon, send them here.


Update: The favicon was updated in January 2009.

User Interface Updates at YouTube

YouTube updated the design of its video watch pages by adding tabs for actions and showing statistics in a new container. The "Favorite" tab is the only one connected to an immediate action and it should be removed, while the favorite videos could be generated based on ratings. Hunter Walk, product manager at YouTube, says that the sharing options "are now contextual to the logged in user, so for example, if you use Digg a lot but not Facebook, Digg will be elevated to a persistent top-level display instead of Facebook".

The search results page has also been updated and the option to sort results by popularity is back. To restrict your search to one or more categories or to a certain language, check the new advanced search.

YouTube's personalized homepage lets you reorder the sections so you can place the featured videos at the top, but it's still less usable than the classic YouTube homepage.