(Not actually) shower thought: maybe if google showed thumbnails beside results, that'd drive websites to avoid using them popups that appear on page load?
I found myself evaluating links I would have otherwise skipped.
Re:HackerNews Grid
by always_good on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @02:58PM
(#15084138)
Same. "Disconnect. Offline only." was completely uninteresting to me on the HN homepage, but the thumbnail made me curious:
http://i.imgur.com/0k4fbc5.png
I think people here are just romanticizing text titles like they're some objective description of the material.
Perhaps visuals would work for a community of graphics designers. But outside of that, it's just not useful. Especially if half of the thumbnail is filled by ads or logos.