Style Over Substance?
March 31, 2014
You might have noticed a simple change in Google’s design recently. The search engine designers decided to remove underlined links, increased font sizes, and deleted the yellow box around AdSense results. Fast Company is pleased with the removal of these Web 1.0 design techniques, because it pushes Google forward into modern times when people use more than a mouse to Web surf. Fast Company discusses their opinion of the change in “How Google’s Redesigned Results Augur A More Beautiful Web.”
Fast Company notes that hyperlinks are not only ugly to the eye, but they also hurt reading comprehension. The design change was headed by Larry Page, but the article also points out that the golden search results would never be touched unless:
“But taste alone is seldom enough to woo Google. Google would never, ever remove hyperlinks on its main page (and again, AdSense!) if it hadn’t tested the new design, and if the company wasn’t completely sure that the design wouldn’t impact Google’s ability to generate clicks. It’s pretty safe to conclude that underlines are a superfluous marker, at least on Google’s pages, which we’ve all used countless times–especially when link text is still the same old shade of blue, filling the “hey, I’m a link that you can click” role on its own.”
The article ends by saying the Web is becoming more beautiful. Fine by us, but beauty is only as substantial as content. Functionality and usefulness is more important that appearance. We don’t live in Victorian times anymore.
Whitney Grace, March 31, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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