Google Home Page
I’ve read a great deal of press regarding the adjusted Google home page (including the use of JavaScript outside of iGoogle). I would post the link to a couple of tidbits, but the blog comments are downright nasty and not family-friendly.
My two comments would center around usability:
- The Google experience (gMail, AdWords, etc…) is as bare-bones as you can make it. While I’ve heard people complain about the placement of the “new” links (already a central part of the Google experience if you use gMail), they are not so far out of the way that they make the site unusable. Quite frankly, people have gone over the top lately in a quest to be the “first person to find something wrong”.
- The use of JavaScript, while puzzling for Google, is not a bad thing for 90% of the Web community. What is of concern, however, is that there are people who depend on the use of this site via a text browser and they’re now left, in some cases, without their most-trusted site. There is a large number of users who have become entirely dependent on Google not only as a “nice to have”, but a “need to have”.
This blog post will become irrelevant in the next week if Google decides to make a change under pressure (doubtful).
I, for one, would rather see technical staff in some remote server room who don’t have a Windows or Mac device with a capable browser get the tools they need to do their job, and the vision or hearing impaired receive the tools they need to live a normal life. Rather than dwell on the path of a company and their decision to use a ten year old scripting language, let’s take a part in solving the larger issues and make the human experience an even playing field.