
A New Look for Google Search - rbinv
https://www.blog.google/products/search/new-design-google-search/
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matthewmacleod
I mean… it's pretty transparently intended to make the adverts less obvious
still, isn't it?

The giveaway for me was that when I saw this headline I got the same feeling I
did when my bank sends me a "good news about your interest rate" email –
everything's about to get a bit worse and there's nothing to do about it.

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0815test
Of course, the inherent flip side of making the adverts less obvious is making
the _content_ even less obvious still. They've slowly A/B tested their way
into using what are basically dark patterns that _will_ be tricking users into
clicking stuff they didn't mean to. This won't go well.

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la_barba
They also reward click-bait material with more ad-revenue making it more
likely that people produce such content.

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Deimorz
Looks like the "Ad" indicator has almost evolved into its final form now.
There's not even any color distinction any more, and they've put it in the
same location as normal results' favicons, which is a spot that people will
become blind to very quickly.

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herpderperator
I was just going to mention that I don't like when designers put these system-
specific icons in a place where user content can also go. Someone can just use
a favicon with a black "Ad" text and it will look just like Google's own ad
indicator, which then becomes a candidate for phishing or at the very least
can mislead users into thinking they are clicking on vetted ad content. The
previous design where there was a dedicated location for the "Ad" indicator is
clearly much better. I am surprised by this change.

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Junk_Collector
While I agree with you in principle, the idea that Google Ads are carefully
vetted and not in fact a teeming mass of malware is already an overly
optimistic view that you should be disabused of.

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lancewiggs
I just tried the same search ("hike yosemite") on my mobile with DuckDuckGo.

The results are very revealing. Firstly the DDG format has less space
allocated to the logo, more entries visible on the screen, no ads nor dark
patterns.

Secondly the results are far better (for me). They start with the same
National Park Services result, but the next is a non-commercial labour of love
(yosmemitehikes.com) which seems excellent, and the third the the Yosemite
Mariposa County Tourism Bureau site. None of these are commercial sites with
pop-ups/Hubspot requests and so on. It's just a better internet experience
overall.

Google obviously puts us all into our own bubble, so your own results may
differ.

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skinnymuch
That’s just one example though. I think it would be hard to say Google results
are not at least equal if not better normally. This coming from someone who
uses Google for search maybe 2% of the time for the past ~7-8 years and Bing
the rest of the time.

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ndiscussion
How about showing me the universal resource locator where I am going, rather
than a "brand"?

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la_barba
They want you to go to all websites through them, instead of typing the URL.
Basically use them as a combined bookmark/history/web search. I admit, its a
very nice convenience.

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tsomctl
And this is the final straw to make me use DuckDuckGo. I don’t care if the
results are inferior, the UI on mobile is so much better, it’s worth it.

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onesmallcoin
About time we gave favicons the love they deserve, I was worried we were
almost going to see them die out. Favicons will live!

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kerng
More hidden ads it seems. :(

