Comments on: Wider Google

By: Balakumar Muthu

Balakumar Muthu — Sun, 15 May 2005 13:51:25 +0000

Google always thinks W-I-D-E-R !!

By: dazed

dazed — Sun, 15 May 2005 02:25:26 +0000

wonder when they’ll put “directory” back above the search box, and at the top of all the results pages.

it was really handy for searching dmoz after a google came up with nothing interesting.

i’ve been using http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/ since they removed the links to dmoz searches, as an alternative.. wowks gweat!

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 14 May 2005 23:27:41 +0000

It was designed for the IE sidebar, but a lot of handhelds use it for their Google link.

By: Max Thrane

Max Thrane — Sat, 14 May 2005 11:03:33 +0000

Ah, I see, just seen it in my refer log so I was kinda curious

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 14 May 2005 00:42:57 +0000

I think that’s for the IE sidebar.

By: Max Thrane

Max Thrane — Sat, 14 May 2005 00:38:42 +0000

By the way, does anyone know what’s http://www.google.com/ie is all about? Some mobile edition (like for PDAs etc) of Google?

By: rob

rob — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:10:25 +0000

Google usually test their changes by rolling them out to increasing numbers of randomly-selected users, starting with a small percentage like 5%. That way if there’s catastrophic bug, it won’t affect all of their gargantuan user base.

By: Ash Haque

Ash Haque — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:40:54 +0000

I don’t notice anything, maybe because I can’t go to google.com (always redirects me to google.ca)

By: Ryan Schwartz

Ryan Schwartz — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:46:42 +0000

Google.ca doesn’t have a Froogle link, so fewer links = optical illusion of a wider search bar.

By: Wider Google? by r0x0rz

Wider Google? by r0x0rz — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:41:23 +0000

[...] Matt thinks that Google has a wider search box now, but I am not quite sure since [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 13 May 2005 14:31:46 +0000

Hmmm, it may have been because I was looking at it on a different computer? When I looked at it on my Powerbook earlier it was definitely much wider. Maybe a false alarm.

By: Matt Is Busy

Matt Is Busy — Fri, 13 May 2005 14:05:36 +0000

Hmm, I looked at archive.org from January 3, 2004 and the search bar is identical in dimension to the current page. I took a screenshot of the evidence that you can see if you click on my name

By: Ryan Waddell

Ryan Waddell — Fri, 13 May 2005 14:02:59 +0000

Interesting – on the main Google.com page, it matches the width of the links… whereas on Google.ca the search bar is now wider than the links are.

By: Matt Is Busy » In Response to PhotoMatt (Wider Google)

Matt Is Busy » In Response to PhotoMatt (Wider Google) — Fri, 13 May 2005 14:01:14 +0000

[...] nder Uncategorized

This is in response to Photo Matt’s post entitled “Wider Google”. Don’t take this as a flame, that’s my last intention Just thought I’d maybe harn [...]

By: DMinnaar

DMinnaar — Fri, 13 May 2005 13:44:19 +0000

Oh it’s so ugly!

By: Lance E. Leonard

Lance E. Leonard — Fri, 13 May 2005 13:04:56 +0000

Or is it simply that they removed the “new!” text next to “Local”?

Check http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://google.com

By: Joen

Joen — Fri, 13 May 2005 10:34:07 +0000

Are you sure they widened it? It’s been a while since I visited Google (I always use the search bar for Googling), but it doesn’t seem much larger than the last time I saw it…

If they did, however, widen it, then as the usability masochist I am, I can tell you why:

§ A wide search box encourages users to write more keywords (JN et. al.)

By: If Else

If Else — Fri, 13 May 2005 10:33:14 +0000

It seems that this change hasn't been fully rolled out yet as I'm still not observing any differences between the current google.com hope page and the older archived home pages. The search bar still appears shorter than the links.