I just went to Google to look something up for work and instead of the normal Google home I got this:
Please no. Please stop. Please don’t ruin Google like Yahoo was ruined years ago. I don’t want a damn portal. I want to search. I have never really liked portal sites. They try to do too much for too many and just end up sucking. Even if you use the personilization features. Just too much crap.
Perhaps Google would do better, but this screen shows no evidence of that. I think you have been able to get this page before, but this is the first time it ever came up as the default for me when I just typed in google.com, and I’m not happy about that at all.
Yes, they have a link to the “Classic Home” on the page, and I’ll try to make sure that on the rare times I actually go to google.com instead of using the Google search box in Safari or Firefox, I’ll go there and not this awful “Personalized Page”. But still…
Google is doing more and more stuff that dilutes what gave them their power and made them THE place to go to find stuff. Some of it clicks and is cool. Others just… no. Please don’t.
And while we’re on google… time to reverse that China policy as well as the similar ones in various places in Europe and say screw you, we won’t censor results at all, and if you want to block us, go right ahead, people will find their way around it. And keep fighting the disclosure the DOJ is trying to do in the US, and if you are forced to submit in the end, deliver it in hard copy!
OK. Thanks.
Looks like there is a toggle. Once I go to the classic page, subsequent typing in of google.com takes me to the classic page. If I go to personalization, subsequent visits send me there. But I don’t remember having gone to that personalization page any time recently (like since last time I want to the normal page) so I don’t know why I was sent there unless they were running an experiment to see how many people would immediately flip back to the classic view… which I of course did. :-)