New look for image search & Groups out of beta

I realized that I didn’t mention that Google Image Search got a makeover. The focus is on the thumbnails, but as you mouse over an image, you get more info. It looks like this:

Daffodil search

If you haven’t taken image search for a spin in a while, now is a good time.

In other news, the new version of Google Groups has left beta status. Two big new features are the ability to customize the look and feel of your discussion group and the ability to upload files that are shared with the group.

Congrats to both the Groups team and the Image Search team. It’s always nice when you can refresh things or drop a beta label. 🙂

104 Responses to New look for image search & Groups out of beta (Leave a comment)

  1. Great News!!!

    But, why there is a 302 redirect instead of 301 from “Google-Beta Groups” to “Google Groups”? In what way the 302 redirect help in Google. Please advise.

    Pratheep

  2. I do not like the new look of Google Images, because when you are trying to browse fast back and forward the pages there is always the OnMouseOver effect of the very bottom line of images that prevents you from clicking on the “Next” button and you can accidently click on the MouseOver div and get to the site it points to. It’s very annoying.

  3. Well, it looks nice, but it’s less useful to me now. I liked having more information immediately on show without having to mouseover each picture. For one thing I could see which image was the nearest resolution for what I wanted (there’s a bit difference between 1024×768 and 1792×1344, as in the first image shown in the search for ‘sunset’ you linked to). Secondly, showing the domain gave me a good guess about what the usage rights over the image might be.

    So all in all it’s a good-looking but less useful move. If there was an option to view all details all the time then I’d be a very happy bunny. Is there a way I can get this feedback to the Image Search team?

  4. I love google groups. So much great info there. I hope you guys can get the spam issue nailed down so you can take off the current penalty (if there is one) from them dominating search for competitive terms like they were a bit ago.

  5. Hey:

    I like the “more results from” feature in Google images. It seems to only appear if there are multiple on-topic images. Very handy.

    Is that new or was I just brain-dead when using Images in the past?

    Cheers,
    Ted Z

  6. Hi. I’ve been wondering why none of the images of my web site been added to the image search since I remade my site to a blog. I got four images in the results but they were indexed over a year ago. Since then nothing..

    You don’t need to do any special investigation but is there any specific factor to consider to make the images appear in the search?

  7. I really like the new Groups interface (actually I already used it while in beta), but I absolutely hate the new Image interface. When I search for an image I e.g. also look at the resolution of the results (and the large/medium/small option just isn’t enough). Further also the size, type and URL provide valuable information. What’s the point of hidding this under a mouse-over? It doesn’t even save screen-estate, because it just hides the information. While I would generally agree that less is sometimes more (in terms of information displayed), I don’t think that this is the case here. Especially as image-type results allow you to focus on the results even when meta-information is displayed too. Scrolling over an image just to get more information takes too much time.

  8. I like the new groups, but I have to say I’m disappointed with the Google Images changes: I can’t do anything new with it, and it takes me 2 to 3 times as long to do what I could previously.

    I’ve heard numerous complaints about it in the office over the last few days. Any ideas on the motivation behind the change, Matt?

  9. I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t show the domain name until hover. This is a real pain when you’re quickly looking for hotlinkers.

    I still don’t understand why a site:mysite search will show hotlinkers even though we have hotlink protection and the image doesn’t show up on their page.

    Couple this with the great Image Massacre of ’06 (we lost over 4000 original photos from the index and a massive traffic drop) and I’m confused by Images right now.

    Any idea when the might crawl again?

  10. I hate it 🙂

    Why? Cause it takes lots of time to find good pics now?

  11. Utterly hate it not showing the image dimensions, as does my colleague.

    Thankfully, I have web developer toolbar for Firefox and can do ctrl-shift-s to disable styles 😀

  12. Quite a few people (juding from comments at Google Blogoscoped) were not too pleased about Google Images now hiding domain & size info behind a hover. Web search also shows domain info, and I find it very, very helpful to put a result in context — it gives you an immediate sense of “location.” I realize you can’t please everyone but wonder how large the percentage of Google Image users is that would rather see this information directly than only see it on hover — I’m sure Google has these stats compiled through usability tests.

    There’s a danger though of a 80/20% kind of thing though that even a thorough usability test may not cover: maybe you only need domain & size info 20% of all times, but maybe in these cases its importance is proportianally much higher than the importance of an uncluttered result in the 80% of the cases. Or differently put, a user may say, “I don’t really mind seeing the additional image info when I don’t need it., but I mind a lot not seeing it directly when I do need it!”

  13. I ditto Ian’s comment on not showing image dimensions and domain by default – this change requires me to move to the Yahoo Image search instead for research.

    I think this an example of ‘coolness’ over utility – it serves/solves no problem and removes functionality.

    In my particular case there is no ability to compare metadata easily anymore, nor infer from the source. I cannot even select 2 images to ready their data side by side.

    At the very least I would say this should be a preference option, or a link to show all metadata should be prominantly present.

    I’d rather the Google Images team had spent time on exposing more metadata (reading EXIF etc), than hiding what was there. Then this approach may have had a useful application in showing extended metadata about the images.

  14. looks like the MSN image search 😉 from a functionality and result presentation stand point

  15. Matt, tell me true. Was the images.google change inspired by people scraping the G Image Search results and using the added info for their benefit?

  16. What I don’t like about the new image search is that the dimensions are not directly visible. If you’re looking for an image it’s mostly for in a document or an other purpose. Then you need an image with specific (or minimum) dimensions. Hmmm… some extra info could be hidden, like Liam says, if there would be EXIF or something, that could be hidden, but the dimensions are too essential in the imag search function in my opinion

  17. Pratheep said:
    “But, why there is a 302 redirect instead of 301 from “Google-Beta Groups” to “Google Groups”? In what way the 302 redirect help in Google.”
    I don’t think they care… http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/infrastructure-status-january-2007#comment-93618
    Seems the serps are full of 302 redirects and other canonical issues.

    But they did clean out the cob-webs…

  18. I don’t like the new google images interface too. Sometimes when I’m searching for an image such as an icon I am looking for an exact set of dimensions. Now I have to hover over every single one to check their dimensions 🙁

  19. Shame the image site doesn’t work with keyboard tabbing — simple accessibility… (Otherwise it is quite cool).

  20. I dont like the new google images interface either.
    I liked having all the image information in plain sight without having to hover over each image.
    Sometimes simple is better!

  21. I too am not a fan of the mouseOver effect. I like to be able to scan the image dimensions quickly when performing an image search. Thanks to Ian for the Ctrl+Shift+S tip for Firefox users who have the Web Developer toolbar!

  22. I miss the dimensions as well. When searching for wallpaper I want an image that is as close to my resolution as possible. Also, I miss seeing the originating domain as it offers additional information about what the image is and where it’s from.

    I see no added value in the new format. It looks prettier but it loses a good chunk of its usefulness. I wish, since I’m logged in anyway, that I could set personal preferences for this kind of thing.

  23. I agree that not having the image size is a detriment to the makeover. Looks good, but just that info would be handy to have right out front, instead of having to mouseover

  24. but as you mouse over an image, you get more info

    Unless you’re using Safari, whereby its utterly broken.

  25. I think this is a big hit on usability. The gee…, erm, engineers who came up with this have negated the worlds’ most powerful comprehension system. With the old format the underlying information could be scanned in what, half a second? And you could see all of it as a set.

    It ‘s now a tedious chore. Sure, this is a neat trick, but why make people work to see information?

    The mind is a terrible thing to ignore.

  26. Matt, do you really like that change?

    Maybe if have a option to choose the older version…

    I don’t want to disable javascript to view in the old way.

  27. I like the old way where I saw the image dimensions and did not have to do extra work to get that info.

  28. I like your suggestions. This was my first time reading one of your posts with my new Google Reader. This thing is badass! I don’t have to keep checking my favorite blogs throughout the day and be dissapointed. I have Google Reader minimized on my desktop and I can open it anytime and see what’s new that I’m interested in.

    Thanks, Matt Cutts. And thanks to that cute little gentleman in the Goodle Reader intro video. At first I didn’t understand why it was awesome, then he said that it’s like E-mail. I don’t have to go out searching for new messages from people, they come to me automatically. The reader is like that, an Inbox for the various blogs I read. It’s really hot. Thanks!

  29. I agree, forcing mouseovers to get info that can be glanced over in a second is a mistake. What were they smoking when they thought this would be intuitive? They’ll probably be forced to change it back, because I havn’t heard one good thing about it from anyone.

  30. Congrats! One left Beta ))
    I love talking there

  31. Wow, on-mouse-over in Images is great!

  32. Ahhhh I really don’t like this. Trying to be fancy is completely worthless. Functionality is why we like Google to begin with.

  33. I would love to see an option to list the pics by image size –
    The biggest daffodil pic being number one – and so on –

    there are 705 large pics of daffodils listed – but I want the biggest daffodil pic of all!

  34. I have to agree that the Google Images change is completely useless. Just because an effect is possible doesn’t mean it should be used. In this case all it does is to reduce the amount of information available when scanning the page. This is a retrograde step, given that a search engine exists purely for the purpose of making information discoverable.

    Also, it discriminates against disabled users who use keyboard navigation in place of a mouse: the additional information is not displayed when the tab key is used to focus the element.

    So, reduced usability for both able-bodied and disabled users. Nice one, Google.

  35. That looks really cool, but it may be worth mentioning that it might be cooler if onmouseover showed you the enlarged image of the picture.

    Just a suggestion.

  36. Finally , I’ve noticed the hover light blue box today while searching for somthing, I was like w00t! Didn’t notice that it was out of beta, great work!
    Cheers

  37. Sorry, don’t like the new format: You have to mouse-over to see the info you used to be able to just look at. Now all that info is HIDDEN. BAD INTERFACE!

  38. While I understand _why_ Google would want to make this change, it seems to increase interactivity, visual performance, etc…. I have a couple issues with it.

    1) Function — adding in the need to mouseover the image changes the whole way I browse photos. Normally, my eyes quickly scan the page in a non-obvious way. I don’t particularly scan in any one direction for very long. However, now, for one reason or another, my eyes feel the need to start left to right, top to bottom, ordering the page, with my hand much more involved than ever before. This really slows down my natural ability to scan through the image search results. As I learn the system more, and as I start to ignore the details that appear on hover, I will probably resume my previous pace, but Google has taken a very user-friendly obvious method of browsing and complicated it.

    2) Form — now this one is outright speculation… it just seems like this is Google’s attempt to visually position themselves with other innovative startups.. I know I know. Google is THE innovative ‘startup’ (can you call a mega-company that anymore? although I’m sure this is what consumers perceive of the brand) but I think the visual style of ‘the startup’ is always evolving — basecamphq.com is to me the moment’s visual archetype. When Google entered the fray, their stripped down style really was THE look… but no more.. I hope Google isn’t trying to adapt their look to suit the trend…

    Google, yes, please always work to adapt your products to be more useful, and usable, just don’t go backwards. please.

  39. AND, one more thing:

    I think you need another catagory of sizes: Very Large

    This catagory should be reserved for images larger than 2 mega pixels in size.

    Cheers

  40. Hey, Matt. I actually stumbled upon this while prepping a PPT yesterday, and I have to agree with the majority–I preferred the old display. Hiding the source, image size & other data in a mouseover turns what was a quick-glance interface into a more time-consuming, scratch & sniff process.

    My vote is to switch back & display the detail by default.

  41. This is a prime example of using ‘neat CSS tricks’ just cos you can, rather than to create clarity or ease of use. It decreases usability, requires people to figure out how to use a page that previously required no thought or knowledge and I honestly fail to see who it benefits or how.

    Ok, it’s kind of a pretty shade of blue. But handsome is as handsome does.

  42. I’m not too pleased with the changes to image search, either. I don’t want to have to wave a cursor across the screen to see what domains have the images.

  43. Philipp Lenssen, I’ll ask the image team and get their take on it. I personally am an info junkie and like having stuff like the domain name easily visible. But at the same time, the new appearance is really clean-looking to me, so I’m torn.

  44. I’d like to ask the same question that Paulo Rodrigo Teixeira did: Do you yourself really prefer the new image interface? Not to look at but to actually use? It seems to me that forcing the user to mouseover 18 separate sections of the page in order to view all the information and all the link options is the opposite of usability (confusability?).

  45. I don’t care for it – I think I’m not alone:

    http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3229309.htm

  46. Hmm I dont like that you can not see all the info at once, you dont see with the cursor, they should take a look at there moderate filter on, they realy filter everything, now you have to search with filter off everytime.

  47. Ummm, my comment seems to have got lost for some reason.

    What I still want to know is if this change was in fact invented to combat scraping/interpreting of image.google results by evil bots and the like. Can’t say I disapprove. Pretty clever actually…….

  48. Nice clean look on the image search but I like knowing what the domain name is without hovering over an image. Sometimes I rule out going to sites based on the domain name and with the domain being hidden it makes it pretty tedious. 🙂

  49. I’ve always wondered why google doesn’t have a spam filter like gmail has. Usenet is filled with spam.

    I understand that gmails spam filter is very good because it is localized to each user, but couldn’t something be done about Groups spam?

  50. I spent a couple of hours this morning in Image Search and to be very honest I hate it.

    As I was scrolling using the mouse wheel I found that the mouse overs popping up all the time was REALLY annoying. Not having the sizes shown and the URL’s to see multiple photos from the same site also was not to my preference.

    Matt this is one change that maybe looked good on paper but it practical use is not very helpful.

  51. I usually dislike using anybody’s words against them, but Matt, this time I think it’s appropriate ;).

    If and when you do speak to the image team, simply ask them if the current design is in keeping with Google’s mission. They’ve got the organizing down, now they just have to back up and again “make it universally accessible and useful.”

  52. Perhaps maybe you can get some Ajax developer to preview the image at a higher resolution if the mouse is kept over for quite a long period of time and then the viewer could effectively preview the image in a higher resolution than the thumbnail, some that coolaris or snap does only bigger. Maybe that would be more user friendly and have a better change.

  53. I only wish google images would let me specify a min or max pixel size for images I’m searching for.

  54. Matt,

    All beautiful 🙂 but, how about the question of many webmasters about the big Google change? Please if nothing happen with Google update, say, webmaster nothing happen.

    Thanks very much for your time.
    Jacques

  55. I absolutely hate the new image search – with all my being. Missing the domain name is bad enough, but missing the image size info. Dude, someone at Google’s been smoking crack. That’s just plain retarded.

  56. Meredith Anderson

    I don’t like the new image results. It looks classy but it’s not useful. I want the size (at least) there so I can get the information at a glance. Why couldn’t there be a control that turns the other information on/off?

  57. I love the new Google Groups, but as everyone has said above I don’t like the new Google images. It’s annoying that you have to mouse-over each image to see the dimensions and the domain info – doesn’t make sense to me.

    Hope they can fix it soon.

  58. There may be a simple solution to all of this…rather than letting the community decide and come up with one solution that won’t please everyone, set a default and let users toggle the information they do and don’t want to see individually. The technology’s already in place…just one more form field for “what ImageSearch Information do you want to see?” with a select box and away you go.

    Personally, I’d recommend leaving it the way it is by default and letting those of us who are info junkies turn on the info we want to see as necessary. And the reason I suggest that isn’t because I think it’s what most of US would want, but because I think it would be what most of THEM would want.

    Who are THEY? THEY are everyone else that isn’t necessarily a techie, but could be a regular surfer like your grandma or that idiot coworker you have that you can’t give too much information to or his head explodes.

    The pastel hover effect is okay, though. I like it. Personally, I’d like to see that incorporated into SERPs. When’s that coming?

  59. Personally, I hate the update to Image search. I’m not sure I understand hiding the info about image dimensions, file size, file type and making a user mouse over the image to see it. I thought it was about making things easier and taking steps away.

    Seems to me it’s not really about making it easier with this update but just adding a jazzy effect.

  60. That’s a bad makeover, i’d rather have all that useful info ready at a glance, since i can instantly pick out useful images (above a certain size for example, but the default google filter doesn’t have that much fine tuning)..

    Please let there be a way to set it back!

  61. Matt said:
    “But at the same time, the new appearance is really clean-looking to me, so I’m torn.”

    But this is not a beauty contest, it is an Information Tool. You should beautify the tool, if you wish, but never diminish its utility.

  62. I don’t like this new look, I’d like to see the URL without neededing to mouseover. This takes a lot more time to do my type of research.

  63. Great new look… I hope some day you’ll be able to get a bigger image/preview on hover like they’ve set up over at i Stock Photo.

  64. settingAgoodExample

    Does this mean we can also not display (hide) text on our web sites until a user mouses over the info?

  65. I do like the new look, however I do hate that ALL the picture info requires a mouseover. I am lazy, I don’t want to mouseover each picture to see the size. When size is important it means you have to mouse over each picture on the site to check if its suitable. I’d rather have the old version at this stage.

  66. FYI…you can get the “old-style” Google Image page results back, with a few browser-tweaks.

    I spotted a little earlier today that someone very clever over at Google Operating System blog just figured out how to “disable” the effect in the Firefox, IE, and Opera browsers. It’s pretty easy. Took almost no time to make the change in Firefox.

    Getting the Old Google Image Search Back
    http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/01/getting-old-google-image-search-back.html

    I prefer the old style method myself as well, as I want all the information up front and open to aid me in deciding if the image (and source) is worth following. Without that information, it makes it difficult to make a quick comparative assessment.

    Thought the folks who prefer the old-style format would find this tip helpful…though I also wish Google would allow a simple cookie-based option setting (like for the safe-search filter) to toggle this style on/off.

    Hope this is just a “trial-balloon” and the toggle option will show up based on feedback….at least this is a “tweak” that might keep folks who prefer the old style using Google Image search until something else shows up.

    –Cheers!

  67. If you don’t want to have to mouseover you can disable javascript in your browser.

    Then they display the information that you’d see on mouseover of course that would defeat several things such as google ads and other javascript activated “features”.

  68. Talking about improvement of Google Images, two things come to my mind.

    First, instead of hiding important information for the sake of a clean look, it might be better to reorganize and display the available information in a more ordered and organised way.
    Take for example the following information for an image:

    1280 x 1024 Pixel – 995k – jpg

    These data may be better displayed as either list data or tabular data, using e.g. borders around each entity.

    And secondly, at times, when one does a quick scan, it becomes quite tedious to click through dozens of pages with just twenty images displayed. I would appreciate it if the number of search results could be set in preferences similar to Google Search, that is from 10 to 100.

  69. Yes! The version of Google groups is great.

  70. I’m confused as to how this hover thing is meant to improve the usability of the image search.

    Seems a lot of people feel it detracts, and jsut makes scanning over content harder….

  71. Keep in mind that all the thumbnails are about the same size, so there’s NO information on actual size until you rollover…

  72. It has definately reduced the usability of the page. You can longer scan for the larger image size, or specific file formats, you have to roll over each image in turn, which slows the whole process down.

    Bad google!

    Its a pointless change.

  73. Pfft! I’d rather see the URL and image dimensions and have to hover that info to see the image itself!

    That is, of course, assuming that the image results were really accurate. But, that seems to be slowly improving …

  74. Yeah, I saw that, and was kind of disappointed that I couldn’t see what domain the image was on until I rolled over, I am sure this will be better for most people, but I dunno, I like to glance over the domains all at once. I think most of the time because I have seen my work on other sites too many times, and it is nice to just see if one of my photos or wallpapers are on domains not of my own. Maybe implement a stylesheet switcher or something. Anyhow, from a purely esthetic point of view it is nice.

  75. Matt, noticed that… nice UI improvement but I think it would be great if at least you showed the domain the files were from without having to mouse over. People are getting better at spotting spammy URLs and that would probably help users who might be fast to click to think twice (or the opposite, if they spot domains they trust).

    On a related note, what if anything can a site do that has been entirely labeled as mature in image search and which can only be found with the safe search filter set to off, do to have that reeavaluted (the site in question has now banned naughty images which only made up about 5% of their total images to begin with).

  76. Maybe they could make more use of the 2 dimensions they have?

    I mean in a Google text search result they have one dimension top->bottom. Top result goes top, 10th result goes to the bottom.
    But in Google images they have a grid in 2 dimensions, left->right, top->bottom.

    Perhaps they could sort the results so that left->right is more colours vs less colours and top to bottom is ‘closer match to keyword’, vs ‘closer match to whole phrase’, or something…

    It doesn’t have to be those 2 variable’s I’m suggesting. I mean they have an algo that chooses the images, that algo has a set of input variables, they could choose two suitable input variables and arrange the result grid by the score of each of these.

    So for another example, suppose you are searching on [monkey ass] and the results in the left column weight more importance on the word ‘monkey’ while the results in the right column are more about ‘ass’.
    If I’m interested in ‘ass that happens to be connected to monkeys’ than ‘monkeys that happen to have an ass’ then the result I want, will be towards the right edge. So then I know to look towards the right edge on page 2, and page 3 and so on.

    Just an idea thrown into the swirling pot.

  77. I thought Mystery Meat was exposed as a poor UI technique years and years ago…

  78. This is done very well, I like the thought earlier showing image sizes.
    I would like to see the image full size direct, instead of going to the images website.

    Cheers

  79. the image guys have too much time on their hands? this is not an improvement in my view.

  80. Why google image links to hotlinkers instead of the real image domain?

    for example this:
    http://images.google.es/images?q=carrera%20gt&le=es&btnG=B%C3%BAsqueda+en+Google&num=20&sourceid=Mozilla-search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

    The first photo is from buscatuning.com but in the google image photo detail shows another web page (the hotlinker page)

    If you search http://images.google.es/images?hl=es&q=carrera+gt+buscatuning&btnG=B%C3%BAsqueda you can see the same photo in the last position so google knows the buscatuning.com page too.

  81. I don’t like this image display coz I am unable to note the domain of origin unless I rolled down. Hence you can suggest some measures to include the domain name. Otherwise, it is one more feather in the cap of the GOOGLE TEAM.

  82. Well, it is much prettier, but I really dislike the new IU for image search. I held out commenting until I used it in “real life” for what I usually use image search for, and I really hate having to mouseover the image to get the domain the image is on as well as the dimensions. In fact, I ended up using Yahoo image search because Google image search is now so bad from a usability perspective when you want to quick see this information.

    I even trolled around the preferences… any chance users could set a preference (similar to how you set a 100 vs 10 search results preference) for image search so we can get the old style so we don’t need to mouseover?

    It is kind of a shame, I think the actual Google image results are much better, but this new change has converted me to Yahoo image search user now.

  83. I’m going to pickup my pitchfork and torch as well and say I don’t like the new image results either. Dimensions and domain are missed.

  84. James Henderson

    So far I haven’t seen someone that actually likes the change. They may say it looks better, but at the same time it’s sacrificing a lot of the usability for something that wasn’t broken and didn’t require fixing in the first place.

  85. Aesthetics seem to be taking over in most things and being considered more important than usability.

  86. I actually like the new change —- I use the image search feature often and I just noticed the change a day or so ago. My first thoughts were that it has that web 2.0 and/or ajax type appearence that everyone is talking about….. Overall I like it… Goog’s got the time to play with stuff like that so why not… Change is important…. IMO

  87. I’ve done a few image searches in the past couple of days and the new Images interface has been frustrating me too. I eventually edited my user.js file to get the old interface back in Firefox. Like Thomas Tallyce said, it does seem very Mystery Meat-y.

  88. The new Google images is very nice, but you can see the image size (ex. 300×312 pixel) only when you place the mouse over it. IMHO it’s not the max usability, because i need to know the image size at a glance..so I hope that the next update will be to show it all the time 😉

  89. I hate the new image interface. Its so bad I’m going to switch to other image searches that do have the information.

    This is the classic example of how Google is becoming beauracratic and Microsoft-like. They “simplify” things for the masses, while make something more difficult to use.

    The negative response is overwhelming. Let’s see if Google actually listens to their users or if they are now so beauracratic that its the first example of users be damned.

    They should at least make this a advanced feature if not the default. Also I’d love to see options to arrange by size and source and a spreadsheet type display list the info for 50 images at a time.

  90. Adieu, DejaNews. You will always be missed.

    Also, will the groups archive ever be complete?

  91. As much as I think Jacob Nielsen is a pompous ass, he is right about mystery meat navigation, and the new implementation of google images unfortunatly goes in that direction. We can no longer scan and digest at a glance but instead must actively crawl across the page to expose information that is valuable. In addition, as someone who’s images appear on google image search, there is value in having my domain displayed under the image. It’s almost like a photo credit in traditional print sense.

  92. I agree with the points of not liking the need to mouse over an item to get key information like image size.

    It looks like one of those classic cases where some designers got a hold of something that was easy to use and made it look better.

  93. As much as I think Jacob Nielsen is a pompous ass…

    That should read “As much as I think Jakob Nielsen is a pompous dinosauric ass with a cult following resembling the characters of the ‘Lemmings’ video game and without an original thought since 1998…”

    Other than that, I tend to agree with ya. 😉

  94. I totally agree with the mystery meat navigation comments – Matt – don’t Google employ usability people anymore?

    I hate mystery meat navigation. Of course, if you disable Javascript – you still effectively get the ‘old’ image search.

    BTW It wasn’t Jakob Nielsen who coined the term “mystery meat navigation’ – it was Vincent Flanders – on his ‘web pages that suck’ site.

  95. I want to add that I, too, am frustrated by the new Google Image Search. I don’t want to rehash what everyone (including myself, elsewhere) has already said, but I do want to emphasize that I can’t even tell where I can click to find more images from the same website without rolling over each picture. This is a real case of looks over usability (and the new design doesn’t even offer that much of an improvement, in my view, certainly not enough to diminish features). If Google doesn’t correct this, I believe casual users will start to leave, and Google Images will take a serious hit.

  96. What’s happening on this?

    1) Bring back old “show all without rollover” system
    2) Add category “Very Large Images”

    Cheers

  97. I think the new look and behavior is awful for many reasons.

    1. Mouse movement: It requires you to move always your mouse. If you want to see the associated information, you have to mouse over the pix. If you do not want to see the blue mouse over block, you also have to move your mouse, but completely out of the window.

    2. Light Show: If you move your mouse across the screen you get an incredible light show of dancing blue squares. The amount of visual noise being popped up as a result of MouseOvers on the net has passed the tipping point. It is beyond distracting and annoying, and is well into maddening. And this new behavior in Image Search is one of the worst examples.

    3. Already mentioned: All the other reasons like loss of attribution, image size, etc.

    4. Virus spreader: Not seeing the website name means more people will be suckered into the bad domains with lurking infections. I’ll bet the number of computers that get infected from clicking on Image Search pix has doubled.

    5. Unilateral and demeaning: It is an insult to do something like this without immediately offering a way to disable the radical new behavior. Google is becoming more like MS every day and it is very disappointing.

    But mostly, the new look and feel distracts me, makes me frustrated, and hurts my arm for having to always drive the mouse out of the window so it will settle down and non popup blue squares. I have gone to Yahoo image search for now.

    JavaScript: just because you *can* do a new thing, doesn’t mean you *should*.

    pp.

  98. Its really annoying you need to move your mouse to each picture to get the information. If they display URL right from the start at least it will save some time.

  99. Google has switched back!

    A very smart and gracious move for a large company.

    Thank you Google!

    pp

  100. Google listens. I hated the new interface where I wanted to see the source of the image before I clicked on it. Now, . Rejoice people

  101. Yes google have switched back yipee, the usability is much better now. i can scan for different file format, image sizes, etc.

  102. Looks like the info is now shown for every picture or am I missing something? Nonetheless the interface is clean and easy to use.

  103. yes, i also hate the old image interface. Going to switch to other image searches that do have the information. But the new Switched one seems better then version 2. Great Job

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