

Is Google using depressing CSS with IE? - DougN7

I&#x27;m not a conspiracy theorist (don&#x27;t you love posts that begin like that!), but today I noticed an unmistakable difference between the Google search results between the major browsers.  It wasn&#x27;t like this yesterday.<p>See http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;kSR2omq.png<p>Results in IE only appear a washed out, less saturated, and grey (especially when you see a full page of results).  I have a very hard time believing Google would try to psychologically manipulate people like this, so what else could be reason for the difference?<p>Very interested in theories :)
======
marco-fiset
IMHO, this is barely noticeable and one must be a very fragile person to be
psycologically manipulated by a darker shade of text color.

~~~
DougN7
It's quite noticeable on a page full of results. I'm finding it irritating
because the contrast is lower.

------
ifrins
I don't think this is just directed to IE users, they are probably doing their
routinary A/B tests. I've also seen this darker color scheme in the past weeks
even though I wasn't using neither Windows nor IE, it was Chrome.

~~~
DougN7
You're probably right. IE is now showing the same color as Chrome like it was
yesterday.

------
DougN7
UPDATE: 6 hours later (and clearing cookies) and the Google search results are
now showing the same color in IE as Chrome. A/B testing seems like the best
guess...

------
Hrundi
This comes from a company that puts #FFF7ED as a background color on the SERP
ads so that people with flat screens will not see it from certain angles and
believe they are search results.

They most certainly possess the capability of doing a lot of A/B testing due
to their immense volume, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it an attempt to
psychologically manipulate people.

~~~
yuhong
I know:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6055862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6055862)

------
83a
please create a second triple of screenshots with a blank page showing two
divs with background #093 and #12c. perhaps it's a color managment problem on
client side.

------
captainmuon
Maybe a color management issue in IE 10?

~~~
taf2
right - has anyone actually just looked at the color hex values in css to
confirm whether google is presenting a different color?

[update]: yeah the colors are identical - check your color settings

color: #12c # IE10 color: #12c # chrome 28

