Ever So Humble

Google Through the Years
Google's Home Page -- Consistent Simplicity
Since its launch in 1998, Google has kept its home page simple, limiting the amount of text and link options. This gallery shows how the Google homepage has evolved over the past eight years -- a set of images that shows just how little tinkering the search-engine giant has done with its front door.

Yahoo, by contrast, has been adding ever more features to its home page, from expanded e-mail to local weather to lists of hot movies and restaurants. "We're giving users everything they need to be efficient on the Web and, more and more, bringing it to one place," said Yahoo spokeswoman Meagan Busath. "Users really appreciate the breadth of services on the page."

Google loyalists, such as Simone Parrish of Bethesda, demur. Parrish adamantly prefers the clarity of Google's home page, which she suggested reflects a focused company mission. "Adding more to the page would be upsetting," she said. "I find a lot of other Internet portal home pages overwhelming. I really like not having all those other services coming at me."

Even what appear to be small revisions on Google's home page require detailed review by a team of engineers, Web page designers and product managers who report to Mayer. Their analysis draws on data collected from monthly studies of how test subjects use the site.

Google also runs as many as 10 subtly different American home pages at once so researchers can evaluate proposed changes. Decisions about the home page content are considered so consequential that Mayer's recommendations are forwarded to chief executive Eric E. Schmidt and co-presidents Larry Page and Sergey Brin for final ratification.

Since the Google home page debuted, features have come and gone. Services that failed to become star performers were booted off. The company's shopping service, Froogle, and its discussion forum, Google Groups, were relegated in August to a secondary menu, which can be called up by clicking on the "more" button. Mayer said they had not attracted enough user attention.

Executives have grown more selective as the company has matured. "The bar is higher for getting on to the home page," she said. Services should now attract more than 10 million page views a day and be used by a majority of visitors over the course of a week to retain home-page billing.

Today, the only features to make the grade and be included as buttons above the main search box are for searches of the Web, Images, Video, Maps and News.

Mayer contended it would be pointless to crowd the page with too many distractions. "We really believe people are going to remember only five to seven services," she said. "Educating them about more than that will lead to nothing but user confusion."

Google has also wrestled with how to highlight other emerging services as it has expanded beyond search, now, for instance, weighing whether to add the e-mail service, Gmail, as a button on the home page. Doing so could shatter the symmetry of the page because the other services displayed are all for Web searches.

This issue may ultimately be resolved as Google redesigns its home page in the next few years, Mayer said. The company expects to remake the layout, showcase some different services and change the way users navigate through the site. But she stressed that Google does not expect the page to get much heavier, instead limiting the number of words to a relatively svelte 50 or so.

Nor do company executives expect to abandon the colorful Google logo , which they gaily deck out for holidays. She added that these festive adornments, along with "I'm Feeling Lucky" and the Goooooooooogle at the bottom of search results and ads, are the spirit in the Google machine and will continue to be a sentimental selling point for a corporation that, ironically, built its success on the cold mathematical calculations of a search algorithm.