I liked this, from Gerry McGovern this weekend:
What do you see on the Google homepage? A very
big search box. And is this all that Google offers? Of course
not.
Here’s what else Google offers: Alerts, Local, Answers, Maps,
Blog Search, Mobile, Book Search, News, Catalogs, Scholar,
Directory, SMS, Froogle, Special Searches, Groups, University
Search, Images, Labs, Web Search Features, Blogger, Picasa,
Code, Talk, Desktop, Toolbar, Earth, Translate, Gmail.
I’m not sure if it’s apocryphal or not, but I heard a story where someone sent email to Sergey or maybe Larry every day with just a number in the subject – “33” say. I can’t remember where I heard it, maybe I heard it at Google itself. Every day they’d get the same message and had no idea why. Then one day they changed the website, added some text perhaps, and the mail changed “34” or “35” or “36”. Someone was keeping an eye out and saying “less is more”. True? Maybe, maybe not. But simplicity wins.
Oddly, I have no idea how to find that story via google and see how true it might be,
There\’s a section in the video below that talks about the UI department at Google, and how they\’ve done such a great job by keeping the UI clean despite myriad products under the surface.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3383042311441257769&q=match+of+the+dayFunnily enough, I found this video (5hrs in length!) using the seemingly unrelated keywords \”match of the day\”
And some more on the google UIhttp://alan.blog-city.com/an_evening_with_googles_marissa_mayer.htm