I really don’t see this as a move towards trying to become a ‘retro Google'... Looking at where MSFT is heading with a unified design across all its products and properties, it looks to me like a natural evolution of the page becoming more ‘Metro’ (simple, clean, intuitive). And there are really only so many ways to display text/links in a 'minimalistic' fashion while keeping the basic functionality people expect...

I’d guess though that this is a first in a series of small, gradual, changes to the site geared toward 'metrofying' it. I bet we’ll soon see Segoe replace Arial as the predominant font next.

Bing styles itself as a retro Google, to capture people who long for the old days.

Chrome OS styles itself as an old Windows desktop (compared to forthcoming Win8) to capture people who long for the old days.

Business as usual.

How does Chrome OS resemble old Windows?

here's chrome os: http://cdn.techpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/chrome-os-a...

here's windows 7: http://www.techfuels.com/attachments/windows-7-2000-nt/28356...

Do you mean to say Chrome OS looks like Windows because the toolbar is on the button like Windows and not on the top like *nix?

Why do you think nix has a toolbar on top? There's no "nix interface". There are thousands of them. And most of the interfaces allow you to change the location of the panels. I laughed out lout at what you said.

Either way, IMHO those two desktops look similar.

The most popular *nix UI is the one you get with OS X and it's toolbar is at the top. So is the standard toolbar on Ubuntu.

And there are not thousands of linux interfaces. Having the ability to customize does not mean there's a new interface every time you adjust something. Leave the hyperbole on 4chan.

Can we just not call it nix? I think that is what is confusing. Maybe its just the most popular desktop linux format (at least currently) or something else. It is kind of weird to talk about a standard nix interface that isn't a terminal (at least it seems that way to me). Every linux box I use always has different desktop/X-environment from the next. There may not be thousands of X11 desktops, but there are quite a few (cde, enlightenment, gnome, kde, xfce, just off the top of my hdead) that all have their differences. I would agree more with the other guy, but acknowledge its pedantic details.

I mean if you want to say that they don't resemble one another, that's fine, but I think that might be a bit of denial.

The first thing I thought of when I looked at the ChromeOS screenshot was it was a cross between Windows and the iPad. The toolbar/taskbar at the bottom is very Windows-y in its appearance, and the grid of icons looks like the iPad launcher (also the Honeycomb launcher too).

You can't see this unless you're set to United States in your preferences, but it does look extremely like old Google, which is no bad thing.

I'm not in US - screenshot please?

Whats that weird strip at the top? It looks like some image that's been cut off.

I'm sure there were enumerable back and forth discussions about that. Bing differentiated itself in the beginning with the large background image on the homepage as opposed to the simple colourful logo on white background that defined the Google experience.

Then Google copied the background image idea.

Now Bing has gone minimal, but there's obviously still some residual pull/desire around using imagery.

That little strip is a remnant. Like a human appendix it's a residual organ that wasn't completely eradicated as it evolved into the current design.

Do you have a screenshot of Google with a background image? I don't recall ever seeing one.

Google added it as a "feature" and made it a default for a short amount of time to market the background customization option:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/09/google-adds-a-background-im...

It's a small strip of the landing page image present on http://bing.com . Its tooltip is "Explore today's homepage". If you click on the small strip, you indeed go back to the landing page.

If you click on the bing icon, though, you also go back to the landing page.

So this little bit of refinement seems to highlight the ever-changing-landing-image as a part of the bing experience.

Probably on a linux / osx thing. I am having the same problem with firefox in Linux. props to Bing engineers for messing that up.

I am in the U.S.; can you post a screenshot too? (I tried changing en-US to de-DE in bitsushi's link, but the layout seemed the same. Maybe it's because I'm on an iPad?)

just add &cc=us at the end of your query string.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=hn&cc=us

Forgive me for being too blatant, but I'm puzzled by their reason of doing this. Do people really switch search engines because of the UI? I understand that some people might prefer the less cluttered version, but when it comes down to it, the way it looks is secondary to its primary function: giving you good results. After a while, the look becomes less important.

I don't think it also serves their interest well, too, when their UI is a reminder of their competitor (the retro look of their competitor, to be precise). Google succeeded with a minimalistic UI because it made them look different from the rest and no one did it before. When Bing does it now, it makes them look like Google.

>the way it looks is secondary to its primary function: giving you good results.

I'm honestly not trying to be mean, but I'm not sure you understand human psychology in this area. Humans are very consistently swayed by looks over intrinsic value.

People aren't necessarily doing quantitative A/B tests between search engines, they're just plugging the latest search terms they want answers to into the search field and (in many cases) getting a search result that seems to fit the bill.

If the search engine displays results in an visually uncluttered (seemingly authoritative) way then that would seem like a good search engine choice.

There was that blog post the other day where someone updated and improved their site design and was lauded by users for all the new features they had introduced, when all they'd done was refresh the design.

> I'm honestly not trying to be mean,

Hey, no problem :), I'm just here for the discussion.

> but I'm not sure you understand human psychology in this area. Humans are very consistently swayed by looks over intrinsic value.

I do understand that looks matter to a degree. Some website redesigns does make them much more appealing. But I feel like at best the effects are only temporary. It doesn't take long before the user gets bored and thinks about how ugly it looks, unless the redesign comes with added functionality/feature (which I fail to find in this case).

Moreover, I mentioned earlier that it doesn't seem beneficial for Bing that its redesign is a reminder of its competitor. So I still find their decision puzzling.

>unless the redesign comes with added functionality/feature (which I fail to find in this case).

The redesign, in-and-of-itself likely provides added f/f in terms of reduced cognitive load in parsing the search results page. It's simple and easily grokked.

>a reminder of its competitor.

I don't think anyone is definitively and quantifiably testing Google search results in their day to day lives, but I suspect there's a nagging sense that they're not really as 'good' as they used to be.

I speculate that it's because the results have become more cluttered. Very few people would consciously compare Bing 2.today with Google 2.yesterday.

I think it's a clever play. It will probably not pan out as it's difficult to turn a ship as large as "Default Search" in another direction but we live in interesting times.

Around 90% of the searches I do are for "easy" things that any search engine should be able to find. Since I would only need to go back to Google for around 10% of the searches, if a competing search engine made the 90% case more pleasant to use would be a win for me.

Are you sure about that? Since one of out ten searches would fail, I'd think one would quickly develop a bias and start saying "Bing never works for my searches and I always have to go back to Google anyways."

I would think so. You're using it almost everyday, and annoying things will make you switch.

That seems plausible only if the search quality differs by a small margin. I haven't been using Bing extensively, but I remember trying some queries a while ago and Google was showing better results. Is this still the case now or have they improved considerably?

I've tried to use Bing as my default search engine in moments of frustration but always go back to Google. The main reason is UI. Bing has too much fancy JavaScript that slows it down and confuses me ever so slightly, and the information is a little harder to scan, perhaps because of familiarity with Google.

if bing is interested in optimizing its 15% search market share, this is a nice move (and don't get me wrong, 15% of search is a pretty big business). BUT, if they're interested in upending the market and really doing something interesting, they should have a chat with duckduckgo to see what the future of search might look like.

my hunch is the former is their goal...

DDG is my default search engine, i quite like it.

But, you and I live in different galaxies if you think DDG is Bing's key to gaining market share. DDGs value of privacy and no filter bubbles, is not a compelling (or even understandable) concept to an overwhelming majority of users. Facebook proves this.

Even to those who understand it, the value of DDG is variable. I tried DDG for a few weeks, but switched back to google simply because I was actually having to sort through more results than the specialized results that google gives me.

I like feeling that my privacy is preserved on DDG but I'm still debating whether or not it's an acceptable trade-off for search result relevancy for me.

Is porn the 7th result down for anyone else?

Screenshot: https://twitter.com/#!/gee_totes/status/197695446821519360

At least, I think that's a porn link. Don't dare click on it because I'm on a work computer.

Nope, it's far worse. It's just a spam link to another search engine that does a search for "Vintage Xxx Tube". SFW so long work doesn't consider search results containing descriptions of porn sites to be unsafe.

For me, all results on first page except one are porn.

A word of appreciation for the highlighting of the search words in the cached page, such as Google had and lost.

(Having to bulls-eye a dinky little triangle to click 'cached' in a single-item drop-down ... not so much appreciated.)

Does this mean that Bing is on its way to being a billion dollar website? See number 1 here: http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html.

It is a billion dollar website considering it loses billions every year. That means they are investing billions in it.

Also being a copycat doesn't work too well unless you have a completely different strategy than competing head-on, which Bing doesn't.

It's a good strategy when your competitor is consistently making changes which long terms users hate.

Very smart, and spooky.. I was using Bing yesterday and noticed how it was so cluttered. Nobody likes to see so much text squeezed so close together. Glad they got rid of the left hand text. Great stuff. I was close to switching to Bing, and this may have sealed it for me.

Weird. I use those tools on the left side almost every day.

Finds something posted within the last 24 hours --click-- Find only forum discussions with your search term --click-- (This is especially valuable since I get the most information about damn near everything from reading people's discussions on that thing) Get a map of that restaurant I just searched --click--

The only thing that's bothering me on Google's search is that right column with the social stuff, especially if my search generated a lot of it. But my eye just doesn't tend to go there anyways so it doesn't bother me that much.

I like it but why couldn't they go all the way and leave out the dropdown image on top? It's jarring to the otherwise clean and enticing page. Put a non-intrusive link instead.

The above rant aside, I think it's a good move on their part.

It's not that different from the default look and feel of DuckDuckGo. Just sayin'...

It's what people want. I think they nailed it.