Google's Changing Personality Amol Mategaonkar10:15 AM 4 comments

I am not sure if you have observed this, but recently Google added a small new feature to the legendary http://www.google.com/ page. The change might look very subtle, but it indicates a major shift from the very fundamental principle of UI Design that google is known for - minimalistic design. I have no clue why google has done this. Let me explain.

The Classical Way

Google is known for its simplicity in User Interface (UI) design. Its UIs are easy to use, intuitive and free of clutter. The best example of this is http://www.google.com/ The world's most visited website just had a google logo, a text box and two buttons - "Google Search" and "I am Feeling Lucky". Over a period of time Google added links to other google applications such as News, Image Search, YouTube, Orkut, Photos and so on in addition to some language options. It even added a feature last year where all these options and links are hidden by default and get enabled only when you move the mouse a little.

The story has it that when the google founders created google, they didn't know HTML coding and they created a very simple design which they could code. Over the period of time that became the signature design of google. Just a plain white background, google logo and a text box with two buttons. I loved it. Millions loved it the world over. However, Google just lost it... well almost.

The New Option

Recently google added a new link towards the left side bottom of google.com. It reads "Change Background Image". You need to sign-in with your google ID in order to use this feature. What this allows you to do is that you can either upload your own image or select from an existing set of publicly available images that you can set as background to your google.com home page. The image shows up in the background whenever you use google.com anywhere in the world.

Issues

The classical plain white simplistic design has been googl's signature. I am not sure about the motivation for this feature. Somehow I feel, this is a step away from its own legacy. There are some challenges with it as well. The user can really shoot herself in the feet. Try uploading an image that is too small or too big to fit your screen. It messes up the entire look. Second issue is with the logo. Since google can not predict the image color scheme, it has made the logo transparent white. This is again a big deviation from the signature multi-color design of google logo. Thirdly, if you upload a heavy image, it makes the loading of the page slow. Google is known for its speed. Its the most reliable and fast website in the world. A heavy background can make it slow.

Copy Cat???

Did google find motivation for this feature in Microsoft's bing? The way Plain background has been the signature design for Google, beautiful background images has been the key design principle of Microsoft's new search engine - http://www.bing.com/ I love that as well. It has a slightly different approach and does not have any of the issues relating to googl's approach that I mentioned above. Every day it has a new, rich quality background image, showing some famous place in the world. It also provides some useful info about it on mouse over. It does not allow user-uploaded images. The user can not shoot in her feet. When it was introduced last year, this looked new and fresh. Many who used it, loved it.. including me. However, was this the motivation for the new feature in google? I hope not.

I hope the biggest innovator on the Internet didn't have to copy it from Microsoft and had some other inspiration that I am not aware of.

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You are being watched.... by Facebook Amol Mategaonkar7:07 AM 0 comments

Facebook has been the punching bag of the security and privacy advocates for ever. No wonder the movie on facebook, "The Social Effect" has the tag line "When you make 500 million friends, you are bound to make enemies". The biggest criticism for facebook has been that it knows too much about us and there are concerns about security and privacy of this data. Usual response to this criticism is that this is social media and if you are so concerned about privacy, don't share it. I was convinced with this argument until recently when I figured out, there are things which you don't explicitly share, but eventually reach facebook. Here is an example where you need to be aware that facebook is watching you. Many, won't know. I didn't.

Background
Recently, facebook introduced Social Plugins. These are facebook components that any website in the world could embed in their own webpage to provide social networking features through facebook. Examples are - "share on facebook", "like" button, friend list, comments, etc. This requires that the visitor has logged-in to facebook, may be through another browser window or tab. If a website ebmbeds the facebook "like" button on its webpage, the visitors of the website will be able click on "like" button (very similar to you like videos, photos, status messages etc on facebook itslef). This will result into an update on your Wall that you liked that link. This is good. I have no problems with this.
I have a problem with what it does next. Read on.

The Use Case
Follow the steps below.

1. Login to facebook.
2. Go to any article on Times Of India. Say this one.
3. Look at the bottom. You will see this facebook plugin - "Recommend".
   

   

4. If you observe closely, it also tells you if any of your friends have recommended this. In my case it says "Be the first of your friends to recommend this."

What happens in the background?

If you imagine the logic of this, the code snippet from facebook that TOI would have embedded in this page would have sent this info to facebook that amol has visited so and so URL, and in-return asked if anybody from amol's friends recommended this URL? In my case facebook returned none.

The Issue

This is scary. I just happened to be logged in to facebook in some another browser window and without even checking with me, the plugin sent the info to facebook that I visited Times of India - this article. I hate this. I didn't choose to add/enable this plugin to TOI. It did not check with me and peacefully sent the info to facebook that I visited this page. If you don't observe carefully, you would not even see the facebook plugin amidst the clutter on the site. Thankfully facebook didn't put it on my wall , but mind well... it knows that you visited it.

I do share a lot of info on facebook.com through my wall.... my status, photos, videos, links, etc. However, there I do it conciously.... by choice. Here, I never chose to do it. I don'thave option to turn it off either. Forget it, I didn't even know it did all this.

Simple Advise

Log off from facebook after you are done. Don't keep yourself logged in through out the day. Be aware that you are being watched.

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