Well as you no doubt have already noticed things are changing over on Google’s home page. The new look officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. However, not everyone will see it at first, but over the course of the next several days it should be fully launched.
Running a search on Google now results in their self-dubbed ‘Universal’ results. This is fancy-speak for getting a blend of results containing not only traditional website links but also pictures, videos, books, news stories, and maps.
In reality most of this functionality has been around for a while, its just that you may or may not have noticed as Google is notorious for testing features one second then taking them down the next.
More significant to me is the Google Toolbar now featured at the top of their sites. While I don’t think it’s the most visually pleasing feature (to me it kind of looks like a top-nav with the CSS turned-off), it is very nice for those of us who use the majority of Google’s services daily.
This too has been around in different variations for a while, but it was always fairly limited in terms of the services it included. Now, thanks to drop-down, it has just about everything you need just one (or two if it’s in the drop down) click away.
I do hope they plan on making this toolbar blend in with their iGoogle skins as it’s really quite ugly now and looked much better before.
