Did Google Just Jump the Shark?

[Brett_Tabke]

Wow, from a Mashable OpEd piece:

Did Google Just Jump the Shark?

In case you missed it, Google broke a cardinal rule of its famously clean white-space design Tuesday morning. For the first time, the company put an animated banner ad on its sacrosanct search homepage.

“The playground is open,” the ad, for the Nexus 7 tablet, declares. And indeed it is — the home page just became a playground for Google’s legion of marketers. The question is, can it ever close again?

And until today, the company had an unspoken contract with those visitors: you just get the search bar you need, a whimsical (and often educational) drawing, and maybe another easter egg, such as a replacement for “I’m feeling lucky.” But we will resist the siren temptation to do anything else with all that beautiful blank white space, that oasis of calm in your busy life. [mashable.com...]

I am surprised they printed that...

[timwilliams]

Thought about buying one but did not want to set up google wallet...

[lucy24]

<ot>

MOST of my searches are - search term wiki - saves time, cuts to the chase.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/searchterm
(information)

or

www.searchterm.com/
(buy)

eliminate the middleman and work surprisingly often.
</ot>

[Propools]

incrediBILL

I'm amused that this is even news and people actually waste time debating it like it's actually important or anything.

I agree.

Rather than debate it, embrace the concept. Wouldn't if be slick if Google had the tablet in the back ground behind the search box, where it looks like you're actually typing on the tablet?

Wow, I think that would be awesome.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

blinking ads, crappy search results...I'm thinking "alta vista".

They have too much money to be alta vista but they also have shareholders who demand the pace be kept up making it likely this will be uglier than alta vista in a few years. I can't argue with your assessment of the results right now either, I'm 100% sick of seeing one site have 15+ of the top 20 results. I'm having to either scroll down a long way(100 results per page) or type in a -example.com to not have to scroll as far and that's really bad.

*click* oh, I don't like this site *backpage*, *click #2, #3, #4, #5....* Wth, same site?!?

[pontifex]

The end is nigh my friends... :-)

After using Bing for quiet some time now on the laptop (since the repetitive results Kickaxe mentioned started to annoy me, too) I barely miss big G anymore.

[rollinj]

I don't think the mashable writer knows what "jumping the shark" even means...

Really..? Google is only going downhill now because they placed a small link on their homepage as they have done oh so many times before? Hardly.

[Natedog]

It's going to sell a lot more apps which means a lot more money for people other than Google. If you're a leech you have to know where to suck.

Echo the words from MrSavage. And I'm still not sure about this nexus7, looks cool but..

[netmeg]

It *is* pretty cool. I love mine.

[Sierra_Dad]

It's going to sell a lot more apps which means a lot more money for people other than Google. If you're a leech you have to know where to suck.

As one of the leeches, I'm seeing about 4.5% of new installs from the Nexus 7, compared to about 6% for Galaxy Nexus and 7.5% for Droid Razr, which are phones and have been out longer.

In all, the Nexus 7 has some benefits for my target market that Amazon and Barnes and Noble tablets do not, so I'd be happy to see it and its coming rivals gain share.

[incrediBILL]

It *is* pretty cool. I love mine.

Ditto.

Google has a prime ad spot for selling it too based on all the fuss.

I didn't check to see if they showed you the Nexus ad if you went to the Google home page using a Nexus, kind of redundant if they did.