Yesterday Google surprised me with a newly designed home page and search interface. I really have no idea why it happened and if it was a planned test run or some sort of accident. Have you seen this?
google.com
The Google.com home page with large blue buttons and a large search field (recommended: Google.com 1997-2009).
search results
The search results page with a new sub menu on the left side. You can either search for “Everything” or select one of the ‘types of content’ you are interested in. There are further options that let you specify a time frame, show related searches and a timeline. In addition to that you can switch on page images or page previews. “Page images” shows two automated thumbnail previews of selected images from the page at the moment, whereas “Page previews” seems to show a preview image of the page on the right side of the search results.
the interactive timeline
The timeline tool lets you select a time frame and allows you to narrow it down, step by step, while continuously updating the search results. In the above picture I first selected the area between 1960 and 1980 after which the second timeline appeared to offer a more detailed time frame selection.
video search
The faceted navigation for the video search results offers a selection of the preferred duration and video quality to narrow down the search results. All in all: exciting and potentially useful interface changes.