Google maximizes minimalist homepage madness

Google has taken its Rainman-like minimalist-homepage obsession to new extremes, testing a page that includes nothing but the Google name and an empty search box. And a very small trademark symbol. It looks like this: Ultra Minimal Google But there's, well, more. It is no doubt with great pain that when you mouse over this …

[Rob 101]

Nice to see it works the same in all browsers

Well, almost. In IE7 the buttons go away never to re-appear. and in firefox, as mentioned in the article they are there.

Saying that, running the script in the bar again seems to break the whole thing and send it back to normal but it's only a demo and really doesn't bother me.

I did notice that on firefox it made the Chrome Add go away and in IE it didn't (I hadn't closed them manually since I am fairly good at ignoring guff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Broken

I saw this but I just thought it was my web browser on the tiff

[Slappy Frogg]

I must be stupid...

...I'm using Firefox, went to www.google.com pasted the snippet in to the address bar and hit the reload button and nothing happened. Any suggestions?

[pjnola]

Madness?

OK, maybe it's a little excessive. But I like the fact that the home page is compact. YSlow shows that Bing is almost 3 times heavier than Google, and Yahoo's home page is well over 10 times heavier. Google's sparse home page is very practical, both for them and for me. Me likey.

[Rob 101]

I don't know, are you stupid?

Did you press enter or the GO button before reloading the page to actually run the script?

Also, as I said, running the script twice does seem to muff it up.

[Ian Ferguson]

Not minimalist enough for my liking

Why does it need that hefty great logo and (tm) sign? It says 'google.com' in the URL, no more branding necessary.

And why bother with the search box, without anything else to distract the user, they'll know where they are typing.

All it needs is the text you are writing. And a blinking cursor.

Wait... or... no text is necessary if you have a microphone plugged in. Just a blinking cursor. And by cursor, I mean a round, red, glowing light, which pulsates in recognition when you talk to it.

In fact, who needs a monitor? The red glowing light will do.

[poobumwilly]

Didn't work for me... until

Tried in both Firefox 3 and Safari 4... Didn't work.

But, It does work now!

I think it's because my homepage is still set to ye olde "Google suggest" page.

So I tried it on google.com (as opposed to google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en), reloaded the page (still nothing), closed the tab, opened another tab (which automatically opens up my google homepage) - it works.

Having said that though, as it is, it seems pretty pointless... sure it looks nice'n'minimalist - until you touch the mouse. It'd be better if it only revealed the hidden stuff when you moused over them and disappeared when you mouse off them.

[Colin 21]

Working in ie, not firefox

as the title says

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome

She say no...

[MonkeyBot]

Re: Not minimalist enough for my liking

Talking is kind of cumbersome.

Is there any way this could just be plugged in to my brain?

[Red Bren]

If only all home pages were like this!

I nearly always browse somewhere else when a company's home page insists on downloading a huge flash presentation. Show me QUICKLY what you're about and if I'm interested, I'll watch the flash stuff. I have a short atten... Ooh look, boobs!

[TeeCee]

Re: Re: Not minimalist enough for my liking

Seconded, especially if they open source the code to do it.

That way I can crib it to satisfy those Business Requirements for data validation that effectively say: "Read the user's mind and work out WTF they actually meant to put in".

I'm hacked off to the back teeth with repeatedly having to explain that computers are not psychic and that the miraculous powers of the database validation fairies are a myth.

[ShaggyDoggy]

Minimalist ... pah

THIS is minimalist

www.4m33s.com

[Hugh_Pym]

Re: Not minimalist enough for my liking

Do I really need to be there at all?

[Field Marshal Von Krakenfart]

Still not minimalist enough...

They should also remove the search box and the logo,

There, the perfect google search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical chocolate factory bloatware

A truly minimal site would have no logo, just a search query entry box outlined with a white border.

[Alastair McFarlane]

Can't get it to work

Loaded google.com (which quickly transforms into google.co.uk - that'd probably break it), pasted the script into the address bar and hit enter, then reloaded the page. No change. I also tried changing the end of the script to read .co.uk instead of .com - still nothing.

Tried in IE and in Firefox.

[Matt Devney]

Get it to work

Works in FF3 without the script if you type in

www.google.com/ncr

IE6 doesn't like it though, even with the script.

[Matt Devney]

minimalism

Err.. the search bar is pretty minimal, as it doesn't need the home page at all...

[CD001]

Considering...

... this probably relies on a wodge of JavaScript to do all fading to create that "minimalist look" isn't it, purely from the point of view of code and script processing overheads, bloat?

It's bound to be bigger than the ol' static HTML page isn't it.

[ElRodders]

Works in FF

but you need to press refresh rather than go or enter with the js in the address bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Smaller still

For a truly minimal search engine, do the following:

enter http://www.google.com/search?q=

in your browser address bar, followed by your search terms separated by "+" (plus sign).

For example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=atlanta+braves+lose+again

Once you are familiar with it, you can type it almost as quickly as you can locate your Google bookmark.

The reason that I do this is that there isn't any reason for Google to load tons of CSS and Java to display a search box and their logo.

[AndrewH]

@MonkeyBot

"Talking is kind of cumbersome.

Is there any way this could just be plugged in to my brain?"

You need the other Firefox for that - can you think in Russian?