jecasc - 5:24 pm on Sep 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Personally for me Google has been broken for some time now and I seldom use it anymore for search. The reason is: instead of listening to my input and delivering results the algorithm makes guesses about who I might be based on my location and browser settings and then delivers a cacaphony of results. A wild mix of news, shopping, twitter and other stuff I do not want. It's a bit like yahoo when it turned into a portal - only worse. Yahoo at least has the portal stuff seperated in different areas on their website, while Google is trying to mash the portal stuff into its SERPS. Wait a little longer and they will mash your emails from your Gmail account into your SERPS when you are logged in. Or other peoples emails. (I bet it won't take long until your gmail account has privacy settings and you can make your emails public for everyone to read - turned on by default of course).I wonder however: Are they still delivering good results for the majority, am I somehow different and have fallen out of the target group that I do not like anything about their recent "innovations"?

They seem to be overdoing many things recently. Not only turning the SERPS into a portal mash:

- They have a funny little thing going on with their doodles, which is nice now and then. But they have been starting to overdo it - everyday a new doodle, last week I saw a new doodle and it looked familiar and I thought - this has been on Google before, they are starting to repeat themselves. Then I realized it was the Google logo.

- They add background images to Google, which might have been nice - but they push it too far, the images are way to big and do not fit, so they have to kill them of the same day.

- And now they add instant which I do not like - but they seem to be overdoing it again, with removing additional results pages.