Google's design-light, ultra-simple interface
Why do you use Google? Don’t bother to answer, as I’ll take a wild guess. It’s because you want to find something. Am I right? It wasn’t the most difficult job I’ve ever had.
It’s a blindingly obvious reason that almost doesn’t need stating (I’m sure that won’t stop some university department applying for a research grant to spend two years finding this out). Its function is implicit.
Do you use Google because of its brand? Or its creative design? Think really hard before you answer these questions. You might just be tempted to answer “Yes”, especially about the brand. But, without wishing to seem dictatorial, you really should answer “No” to both questions.
Some of you – especially the branding and creative types – might now be fuming, making your lattes extra-hot just by snorting your fiery derision into the paper cup stuck just beneath your nose. Surely, Google’s brand is a vital element in encouraging us to use its services, you’ll say. And that minimalist design – it’s inspired, and “drives” users to its site.
Come off it. We use Google – and always have – because it provides great functionality. Remember back in 1996, when Google first came online. If, like me, you were alive then, you were probably using Yahoo! to search. Did Google look better than Yahoo! when it launched? Did you give a stuff about Google’s brand? Did you even know that its informal corporate motto was “Don’t be evil”?
No, of course you didn’t – all you cared about was that Google seemed to bring back more relevant search results than its competitors. And, that happened because Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google’s founders) developed a new algorithm for searches, not a brand or a creative design – it was functionality, pure and simple.
This should give some people in digital media reason for thought. Too often, an agency’s response to answering a client brief is to get the creatives in a room – meaning only those who are visually creative, of course – to get them to craft the response without a single thought to functionality. The result is invariably a response that is pure eye-candy, initially tasty but ultimately unsatisfying.
Unless it’s an art project, no one uses a website just because it looks good. It has to work. For nearly all sites, true success comes from a marriage of functional and creative design. Yes, Google is now a powerful brand, but only because it initially provided great functionality, and continues to do so. Yes, the Google logo is now a brand icon, but only because we look at it every day as we type in yet another search phrase.
Photo used under Creative Commons from Spencer E Holtaway.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s an interesting question. I think in the early days you’re quite right – Google became popular because it *worked*. Yahoo! was too swamped with its categories (and getting things added to those hundreds of confusing sub-directories took an age – it was a hopelessly misguided metaphor for the web, but who knew back then?) and it looked complicated and fiddly; then along came Google with a white page and a simple text entry box. And more to the point, it actually found the things that you were looking for.
But why is it STILL so popular and dominant? Hard to see anyone toppling it, even though Microsoft’s Bing is actually (say it quietly) rather good, very accurate, and has some nice Ajax-y interface polishes. And yet two minutes after trying out Bing, I was back using Google as normal.
Part of it is habit, surely. But habit can also end up feeling boring and leaving people ripe for a change. Google has managed to find a balance between functionality, simplicity and consistency, without boring people to the point of driving them off or becoming a hate figure people would cut off their noses to spite. And that’s quite a sophisticated piece of brand management over a decade, as well as just being a case of “it works”.
Which there’s no doubt, it does.
Of course, you’re right, Andrew – thanks for the contribution.
Google is now one of those brands users trust implicitly. Like you, I’ve tried Bing, and yes, it’s good. But, like you too, I’ve gone straight back to Google. That’s because I’ve come to trust and rely on Google’s search results, and that trust has been built up over years of using Google’s rock-solid functional offerings. It’s a happy by-product for Google that this has built their brand – there is no way they could have banked such a stock of goodwill simply through brand management. And, because of brand loyalty (or simple inertia) people will continue to use Google – why would they do anything else?
Bing will fail to topple Google until it offers a truly unique and compelling functional offering, which forces users to convert. Nothing in the Bing brand alone, or Microsoft’s, will change that. That’s the limit of branding – it can only do so much with the functionality it is trying to peddle. It is, after all, what Google – a completely unknown brand at the time – did to Yahoo! at the end of the 1990s.
If you want to compare the results of Bing and Google side-by-side, visit this useful site: http://www.bing-vs-google.com/.