I'm almost tempted to use Bing. The new look reminds me of AltaVista or Excite back in the day, and recent Google search results have been about the same quality. When did they lose their touch?
It does look a lot like Bing - but they copied the intelligent suggestions part of Bing, which is what I like about it (for example, the images filter will stand out when Google thinks I might be looking for images). I kind of wish they would give me suggested queries on the left like Bing does too.
Ever since I had my Google service disrupted by the Great Chinese Firewall (text queries are fine now, but innocent Google image queries have always been dicey whereas Bing image searches are almost never blocked), I've been using Bing as my default. I'm pretty satisfied with the results for the text result queries. And when you compare the two image search engines (at least interface-wise), I think Bing wins hands down.
Except they didn't really copy Bing; this results layout has, unless I'm mistaken, been kicking around for a while, with tricks for turning it on so you'd always get it.
The search options (or, as of yesterday, “tools”) have become tremendously helpful, making them more visible seems like a obvious step to take. Might be annoying for people like you and me who always knew how to access and use them but I think we are in the minority.
(All else is mostly cosmetic and very much a question of taste. I see signs of clear progress with a aesthetic that, while being distinctively Google, manages to convey to me for the first time that they care about details.)
Comments
I don't like the new look.
http://i.imgur.com/Uw2ry.png
If I wanted it to look like Bing, I'd use Bing.
I'm almost tempted to use Bing. The new look reminds me of AltaVista or Excite back in the day, and recent Google search results have been about the same quality. When did they lose their touch?
It does look a lot like Bing - but they copied the intelligent suggestions part of Bing, which is what I like about it (for example, the images filter will stand out when Google thinks I might be looking for images). I kind of wish they would give me suggested queries on the left like Bing does too.
Ever since I had my Google service disrupted by the Great Chinese Firewall (text queries are fine now, but innocent Google image queries have always been dicey whereas Bing image searches are almost never blocked), I've been using Bing as my default. I'm pretty satisfied with the results for the text result queries. And when you compare the two image search engines (at least interface-wise), I think Bing wins hands down.
Except they didn't really copy Bing; this results layout has, unless I'm mistaken, been kicking around for a while, with tricks for turning it on so you'd always get it.
It's also just a sidebar. Not really a revolutionary idea.
The search options (or, as of yesterday, “tools”) have become tremendously helpful, making them more visible seems like a obvious step to take. Might be annoying for people like you and me who always knew how to access and use them but I think we are in the minority.
(All else is mostly cosmetic and very much a question of taste. I see signs of clear progress with a aesthetic that, while being distinctively Google, manages to convey to me for the first time that they care about details.)
It's worse than that, I use the advanced options from the CLI.
Rarely click on the "advanced search" link, the left column in the new design is a waste of space to me.
Ugh, I've become a Google search snob!