New Google Homepage
Careful! This post is looking a little old and could be inaccurate in many, many ways
Google have gone all minimalist this December and rolled out an update to its homepage. On coming to the Google homepage now you are simply met with the core elements of the logo, search box and the two buttons, everything else has vanished. It’s only when you move your mouse over the site that the other elements, which are primarily all links, fade in.
From what I’ve been told over twitter and a bit of Google research it seems this is something they’ve been quietly working away on for the past couple of months, but unusually for some of Google’s playtoy’s this has actually gone live.
Personally I think it’s a great improvement, it adds focus to the core elements of the page without changing any of the design, something Google always seems a bit wary of. Plus with the autofocus on the searchbox you could very well never see these faded out links again.