

Google home page even simpler - makecheck

I noticed recently that Google has managed to simplify its home page again, in a neat way.  If you don't move the mouse when you first visit, all you see is the logo and a giant search field; as soon as you move the mouse, the rest of the page fades into view.<p>Maybe not everyone sees this (I'm using a WebKit-based browser) but I thought it was a nice effect.
======
idoh
You can set a cookie to see it: [http://lifehacker.com/5377098/make-the-
minimalist-fading-goo...](http://lifehacker.com/5377098/make-the-minimalist-
fading-google-homepage-your-default)

~~~
mkyc
by entering the following URL

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=abac7a90f5a3784b:LD=en:NR=10:TM=1254990196:LM=1254990236:S=uB6F4jDnMP_DuxtT;path=/;
domain=.google.com");

------
sgk284
Wow, this is great to see. The fact that they're self-reflecting and thinking
"Let's fight the urge to clutter things, how can we make this even simpler?"
is amazing and rare for a large company.

As a for-profit corporation it must be tempting for Google to run ads on their
homepage. They'd make quite a sum on it(sure most technical users rarely see
the homepage but that's the exception). It's good to see that they are
swinging to the other extreme instead.

------
cmelbye
They've been testing this for the past week. I've seen it a few times, but it
appears to be quite random.

------
ugh
Hm. Hm. I like the idea. But when loading the page there is a ever so slight
delay. If I actually want to click something not displayed by default I have
to wait a fraction of a second before all that stuff fades in. Which means I
will normally wiggle around my mouse like crazy to make it display stuff. The
delay is not long (I’m not talking about the fade in itself, that one’s
perfectly fast enough), but annoying. Since wanting actually to click
something is one of the only times I personally use the Google page (not true
for many other people if I trust my observations, only for crazy people like
you’ll find here) I notice this every time.

------
ggchappell
Don't see it. Tried it in both FF & Arora (latter is based on Webkit). I get
the whole page immediately.

