moTi - 10:20 am on Jan 20, 2010 (gmt 0)

google and user friendliness are two different worlds. google in it's core is a tech company. techies by nature are always having a real struggle with marketing issues. and usability can be counted to one of the marketing disciplines.

it seems that initially only by chance the user interface was designed simple and from then on they only incidentally stumbled upon means that are actually satisfying for the user - which in effect is a basic requirement to make money. sometimes they don't move further at all (look at the development of adsense - nothing worthwhile since years).

instead of having a geat idea beforehand, they often enough disimprove for the worse. they measure, and if the stats indicate it's good, they retain it. but in case of hardly measurable things like user satisfaction with certain new features, they fail. rather make a survey than let stats decide in that case - even then it's hard to decide which way to go, because even relatively few users which are heavily dissatisfied can make a difference. just because a) they have a quasi monopoly on search, b) people are too lazy to change and c) for lack of better alternatives google gets along with it.

simple but annoying things: i hate the suggestion tool in the search box. so often it happens to me that when i type in some letters, it pops out and i accidentally click the first suggestion. and i hate that they show me the "did you mean.." results directly included in the serps when i haven't even clicked the "did you mean..". if i mistype, it's ok, but then i realize i mistyped and consequently click the "did you mean..". otherwise i just wanted to see results exactly for what i typed in. do not force me to use quotes to get exact results for each and every search queue! i'm no dyslexic in my native language. google treats sane users as fools. not to speak of behavioral results, which yet opens another whole different can of worms.

either they have to deploy a seperate "google for dummies" or a "google for pros" search engine, but this mishmash is just bad for overall experience.

monopolies get sluggish and slow down progress. google search experience actually has deteriorated for me. they are clearly tech driven. they badly need usability experts.