I alluded to this earlier today in the post about Google Video and UPN when I mentioned a shift of sorts from conduit to destination. Here’s another example: Google is determined to keep the main home page uncluttered but many users want more than a search box. The solution for now offers users looking for more an alternative, personalized home page. But, as Business Week points out, it’s a safe bet most visitors don’t know the option exists. Still, those who use it (I keep forgetting it’s there) to track RSS, search history, bookmarks, stocks, and Gmail have more reasons to spend time at Google, making it as much destination as jumping off point. The more reasons a user has to spend time at Google, the less time for other portals. The best hope for Yahoo, AOL and MSN is that Google isn’t drawing from other portals but is adding users who previously avoided them.
BW spent some quality time with one of the most public faces of Google, Marissa Mayer — employee #20 and as director of consumer Web products, perhaps the most under-titled exec at the company. Just about everything Google does with consumers in mind goes through Mayer at some point. Mayer: “I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra. Nobody remembers the Sex Book (Madonna) or the Newton (Apple). Consumers remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear.” Worth a read.
NYT: One more Google item — the company is challenging users to guess the number of pages the service searches after phasing in a larger index and has removed the latest number “8,168,684,336” from the home page. Google and Yahoo scuffled last month after the latter claimed it had the larger search index. The one-upsmanship continues with a statement from Yahoo included in John Markoff’s story: “We congratulate Google on removing the index size number from its home page and recognizing that it is a meaningless number. As we’ve said in the past, what matters is that consumers find what they are looking for, and we invite Google users to compare their results to Yahoo Search.”
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