I've found the combination of google instant plus the new previews to be impressively useful when using Google professionally.
I'm working with clojure at the moment which is new to me, so I find myself doing a lot of rapid-fire Google searches to answer "is there a library for x?" or "how do I do y?" like questions.
Before instant and preview, I'd typically do a search and then open a list of the most promising answers in tab - and then possibly do the same with other variants of the search. Then I'd use keyboard shortcuts to move through the tabs and close the irrelevant ones.
Now, I've found that I can usually refine the search to a single good one using instant, by looking at the immediate feedback of the results being returned, and preview lets me quickly see which of the results are junk and which are actually salient before I even get as far as opening them in a tab.
They've made an operation that I do many times a day considerably faster and more interactive and reduced the cognitive load. This is usability where it matters - bringing information closer to my mind so I can get things done quicker.
Most impressive to me is that these improvements seem make a more significant difference for the long tail of professional work, rather than the more trivial searches for new products or celebrity gossip etc. I'm thankful to see Google choosing this as a priority.
In a list of great predictions of our time, "There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in [the mobile phone] business" has to be right up there.
I don't know if it will bring on ruin, but I certainly found the old image search much more friendly and usable. Both this and page preview seems like "another useless feature that someone thinks improves the experience when it does nothing but show off the fact that someone can code JavaScript or some other display manipulation language." Clean and fast wins the day with me ... Duck Duck Go?
I like the new one for the most part. Sometimes I would prefer the sizes to be listed under the image, but having the page full of images with minimal whitespace is nice; less clicking to see the results.
It's possible to be a good tech journalist without having coded something yourself (though that's not to say that Dvorak is a good journalist). Sure, it would probably be an asset, and a lack of technical context can make people write some stupid stuff, but not having built something does not automatically invalidate anyone's opinions.
Most journalists have never worked in their fields, but nobody's complaining about that. The asinine idea that nobody's allowed to have an opinion about any tech company without being a programmer is getting old fast.
Flagged. Anything with Dvorak's name should be auto-flagged. If he ever raises an argument that's credible to the HN audience than that means he failed his own quality criteria: that is to write a specious argument designed to appeal to the uninformed reader but that fails any sort of detailed analysis so hard that anyone with half a clue who reads it will be compelled to debunk it and thus angrily drive traffic to the article.
Rather astonishingly, he presents no data whatsoever on whether users (y'know, the ones who matter) actually like instant search and the new image search.
Without that, his argument that Google is in some sort of "decline" because of their introduction can't be taken seriously, and the article is nothing more than a rant about how he dislikes them. This is a fact about John C. Dvorak, not Google.
I disagree with the author, and think that he hasn't used google image search very extensively.
"Instead of the single page of thumbnails, you get over 20 pages of large thumbnails all on the same huge page."
The (near) endless scrolling model works better for rapidly sorting large sets of images, not worse.
"There is no information, just endless thumbnails. No sizes, no locations to scan, nothing! ... Now you have to place the pointer on top of each image for ... size and location information."
If you are optimizing for a an interface for sorting the most images possible, removing text makes sense to me. Also, sorting options for the image size is now on the left, which I find more useful than reading text below each image.
The pop-ups also contain controls which the author ignores that are very handy: similar images, and different sizes of the same image.
Yeah, a bit shock-jockish, which is funny considering the pcmag source. I forgot they even existed. Oh, probably because they dropped in relevance like a friggin rock.
I'd upvote you twice if I could. I actually audibly groaned when I saw who the author was. Didn't even read the article, I knew it was going to be full of crap. I can't believe I graced him with a pageview. Ugh.
Sorry, I see a lot of people don't care for Dvorak, I probably should have put his name in the title. I do think he occasionally has something interesting to say. Simple, clean, fast is why I've used Google and I think that is primarily what has made them a success. If they complicate their applications, will that be a detriment to their business? That's an important question.
Knowing nothing about the man. I only got through the first paragraph before I realized the man has no idea what he's talking about. I am not likely to listen to anything he says says ever again.
Agree with the many other people commenting here that the article was full of nonsense. And the idea that these changes spell "Google's inevitable ruin" is pretty hilarious.
That said, I do hate the changes. I found the old image search far nicer to use. The most important negative change is that when looking for an image, I like to open up multiple options in new tabs, sort of making a shortlist from which to chose from later. To do this I, while scanning the images, click on ones of interest with my middle mouse button. With the new version of Google images, the images don't become actual hyperlinks until you have hovered over them for about a second, so there's a considerable delay when trying to open multiple images in new tabs quickly.
I also dislike the live results stuff, I'm not sure if there's any specific reason or just because I'm used to the traditional method - I haven't actually used it nearly enough to know if I'd get used to it, given the chance. I use https://encrypted.google.com, which hasn't rolled out that feature, thankfully. (Possibly my issue is this: I'm a very fast typer, so I can complete my exact search query without it taking noticeably longer than completing half of my query, and it's therefore more efficient to wait until I get the most accurate results, rather than hoping that a less accurate search will have found what I'm looking for.)
>With the new version of Google images, the images don't become actual hyperlinks until you have hovered over them for about a second, so there's a considerable delay when trying to open multiple images in new tabs quickly.
That is patently untrue.
[source: I just tried. I middle-clicked as many links as I could as fast as I could. Each one resulted in a new tab instantly]
Some valid usability criticisms, swamped in less useful ones and linkbaity headers. I actually agree that some of the new features are a little too bandwidth hungry, but am OK with that because I want to see greater demand for last mile broadband on the west coast. Reading about the speeds available on FIOS makes me cry.
I'm surprised he didn't take a few stabs at Google News, which really does have fundamental problems. He has touched on them [1] but the criticisms are rather shallow and miss the mark.
I don't like seeing Dvorak called a troll. Disclosure: I wrote for PC Mag in London for a while, so there's a bit of collegiality at work, but I've always seen him as a gadfly - a literary nickname for the horsefly, an annoying creature that buzzes and has a painful bite, but which perform useful functions of pollination, providing forensic evidence, and contribute to the weeding out evolutionary misfits. Trolls (by my definition) deliberately seek to mislead or irritate others for amusement's sake - occasionally everyone's, but usually only their own. Dvorak honestly thinks the things he complains about are broken, even if he's often wrong about how, why or what extent. He is the Ur-User :-)
Yes! I agree completely with this. I was just trying to do an image search on google earlier today and it drove me nuts having to hover over each image to see the size and then get shunted off to some weird ajax light box display after finally picking one.
It was bad enough that I abandoned the google search and went to baidu, which was actually the more minimalist option for once.
I'm not going to actually go check, but I'm pretty sure the images still load one page at a time, when you scroll to the bottom of the last page (or farther). How can you have a job at PCMag and not acknowledge or even be aware of this?
Old men? You could have just said people and been done with it. When Facebook moves a button there is outrage and mass demonstrations. You younguns and your confirmation bias. Amiright?
I've been impressed by both the new image search and the web previews. With the introduction of Rock Melt, the instant page preview while simultaneously browsing my searches was a productive environment and now Google added it to their page.
The image search I feel is even faster now that I don't have to click through every single page. Before I used Cool Iris. The whole point of image search is supposed to be a visual experience. If you liked an image, check its size. Also, why is his browser crashing? What's he using?
Technology people may not like Google's recent work (me included), but two things must be kept in mind:
1. techies are the minority
2. Google is said to split test heavily, maybe even pathologically
So if a new feature stays it's probably because non-technical people liked it and Google is probably doing the right thing from a business perspective.
[+] [-] rbarooah|15 years ago|reply
I'm working with clojure at the moment which is new to me, so I find myself doing a lot of rapid-fire Google searches to answer "is there a library for x?" or "how do I do y?" like questions.
Before instant and preview, I'd typically do a search and then open a list of the most promising answers in tab - and then possibly do the same with other variants of the search. Then I'd use keyboard shortcuts to move through the tabs and close the irrelevant ones.
Now, I've found that I can usually refine the search to a single good one using instant, by looking at the immediate feedback of the results being returned, and preview lets me quickly see which of the results are junk and which are actually salient before I even get as far as opening them in a tab.
They've made an operation that I do many times a day considerably faster and more interactive and reduced the cognitive load. This is usability where it matters - bringing information closer to my mind so I can get things done quicker.
Most impressive to me is that these improvements seem make a more significant difference for the long tail of professional work, rather than the more trivial searches for new products or celebrity gossip etc. I'm thankful to see Google choosing this as a priority.
I'm reminded of the famous Steve Jobs story about faster boot times saving lives: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...
Google's saving lives too.
[+] [-] werthog|15 years ago|reply
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1923151,00.asp
Has Dvorak ever been right about anything? (And no, he doesn't get credit for the keyboard layout, that was a different guy.)
[+] [-] fragmede|15 years ago|reply
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,939886,00.asp
(Technically, he was short by 9 months, but Apple did the inconceivable, eventually.)
[+] [-] estel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Deprecated|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tariq|15 years ago|reply
re: ddg. regular user, but as others have pointed out already the ajax load for results is annoying (because it's slow and flashy/jerky).
[+] [-] Dylan16807|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qeorge|15 years ago|reply
Wikipedia suggests he's never built anything of his own. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Perhaps that's part of it?
[+] [-] grantheaslip|15 years ago|reply
Most journalists have never worked in their fields, but nobody's complaining about that. The asinine idea that nobody's allowed to have an opinion about any tech company without being a programmer is getting old fast.
[+] [-] siglesias|15 years ago|reply
At best it's satire, not to be taken seriously--if you get up in arms about what he says, he wins and joke's on you.
[+] [-] dasil003|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mithaler|15 years ago|reply
Without that, his argument that Google is in some sort of "decline" because of their introduction can't be taken seriously, and the article is nothing more than a rant about how he dislikes them. This is a fact about John C. Dvorak, not Google.
[+] [-] ascott|15 years ago|reply
"Instead of the single page of thumbnails, you get over 20 pages of large thumbnails all on the same huge page."
The (near) endless scrolling model works better for rapidly sorting large sets of images, not worse.
"There is no information, just endless thumbnails. No sizes, no locations to scan, nothing! ... Now you have to place the pointer on top of each image for ... size and location information."
If you are optimizing for a an interface for sorting the most images possible, removing text makes sense to me. Also, sorting options for the image size is now on the left, which I find more useful than reading text below each image.
The pop-ups also contain controls which the author ignores that are very handy: similar images, and different sizes of the same image.
[+] [-] cullenking|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkj123|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batasrki|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Deprecated|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamT|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castis|15 years ago|reply
Edit: grammar;
[+] [-] corin_|15 years ago|reply
That said, I do hate the changes. I found the old image search far nicer to use. The most important negative change is that when looking for an image, I like to open up multiple options in new tabs, sort of making a shortlist from which to chose from later. To do this I, while scanning the images, click on ones of interest with my middle mouse button. With the new version of Google images, the images don't become actual hyperlinks until you have hovered over them for about a second, so there's a considerable delay when trying to open multiple images in new tabs quickly.
I also dislike the live results stuff, I'm not sure if there's any specific reason or just because I'm used to the traditional method - I haven't actually used it nearly enough to know if I'd get used to it, given the chance. I use https://encrypted.google.com, which hasn't rolled out that feature, thankfully. (Possibly my issue is this: I'm a very fast typer, so I can complete my exact search query without it taking noticeably longer than completing half of my query, and it's therefore more efficient to wait until I get the most accurate results, rather than hoping that a less accurate search will have found what I'm looking for.)
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|15 years ago|reply
That is patently untrue.
[source: I just tried. I middle-clicked as many links as I could as fast as I could. Each one resulted in a new tab instantly]
[+] [-] anigbrowl|15 years ago|reply
I'm surprised he didn't take a few stabs at Google News, which really does have fundamental problems. He has touched on them [1] but the criticisms are rather shallow and miss the mark.
1. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363874,00.asp.
I don't like seeing Dvorak called a troll. Disclosure: I wrote for PC Mag in London for a while, so there's a bit of collegiality at work, but I've always seen him as a gadfly - a literary nickname for the horsefly, an annoying creature that buzzes and has a painful bite, but which perform useful functions of pollination, providing forensic evidence, and contribute to the weeding out evolutionary misfits. Trolls (by my definition) deliberately seek to mislead or irritate others for amusement's sake - occasionally everyone's, but usually only their own. Dvorak honestly thinks the things he complains about are broken, even if he's often wrong about how, why or what extent. He is the Ur-User :-)
[+] [-] xiaoma|15 years ago|reply
It was bad enough that I abandoned the google search and went to baidu, which was actually the more minimalist option for once.
[+] [-] guscost|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Incubus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergo98|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kin|15 years ago|reply
The image search I feel is even faster now that I don't have to click through every single page. Before I used Cool Iris. The whole point of image search is supposed to be a visual experience. If you liked an image, check its size. Also, why is his browser crashing? What's he using?
[+] [-] jameskilton|15 years ago|reply
which is a LOT better look into what Google is doing and why. The sky is not falling Dvorak, never has been, never will be.
[+] [-] kristaps|15 years ago|reply
1. techies are the minority
2. Google is said to split test heavily, maybe even pathologically
So if a new feature stays it's probably because non-technical people liked it and Google is probably doing the right thing from a business perspective.