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Does Google Need A Portal View?

It has been discussed here many times that the allure of Google was the simplicity of its homepage. However, that homepage was created long before any ads or other Google products so it made sense to do something minimal. However, now that Google offers over 20 digital products does it make sense to keep the simple search page? Would it even be possible to change or would users revolt too much? Can something be done to make users more aware of their current offerings without having a diverse effect on the homepage?

What Do They Do?

Okay so besides basic search what else does Google offer?

  1. Alerts
  2. Answers
  3. Blog Search
  4. Book Search
  5. Catalogs
  6. Directory
  7. Froogle
  8. Groups
  9. Images
  10. Labs
  11. Local
  12. Maps
  13. Mobile
  14. News
  15. Scholar
  16. SMS
  17. Special Searches
  18. University Search
  19. Web Search
  20. Blogger
  21. Code/APIs
  22. Desktop
  23. Earth
  24. Gmail
  25. Picasa
  26. Talk
  27. Toolbar
  28. Translate

On Google’s homepage a user is immediately aware of six of these. A public company that releases new products on a monthly basis it seems and it only pushes 6 of its services in front of the millions of people that visit the site daily? It’s tough to say that Google doesn’t wish to run the company for its stockholders, but I would think that as someone with a stake in the company you would want new products to last beyond their buzz/hype period.

Is Change Possible?

I once read somewhere that there are people who constantly watch the Google homepage code to see if it has increased in size at all and if it does they email Google with complaints. Sure their are some passionate users out there so I wonder if it is even possible for Google to make any drastic changes without going overboard and upsetting a large majority of their userbase. It’s definitely not an issue I would want to tackle.

As you can tell I don’t really have any answers to these questions (pathetic) and maybe none need to be found if Google continues with its success, but you have to think sooner or later they will have to extend their reach as Yahoo continues to raise the bar. So do you think any change is possible and if so how would you go about it?

Originally posted on December 1, 2005 @ 11:22 am

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