Saturday, February 22, 2014

Google FAIL Heisenberg FAIL

Google Search

Generally, I do with what changes Google brings to its core product - Search. There are people who have kept a word count on the google landing page, tracked the page size, or the response time, or the images used, over the years that the page has evolved (or devolved?). But I manage, without making a fuss. But a recent UI change has me peeved. 

search for "cool tees"

search for "micromax canvas 4"

search for "seraphim proudleduck"

Notice how the context changes? The next time I have to read what comes up next to "Web". The next time I'll have to find "Images" in the navigation bar. Why, Google, WHY?!

There are over 1b searches performed on Google in a day. Let us fix the number at a billion for convenience.
Say, even if 15% of the people change the context of their search - from regular search, to images, or videos, or maps - which now needs 1s on average to locate and click on the relevant button on the navigation bar, as against the few ms earlier.
Let n = 15 % context changes = 150,000,000 searches
Let t = 1s
Nett time loss of the world per day = n * t = 150,000,000 seconds = 2,500,000 minutes = 41666h = 1736 days = 4 years and 9 months
WOW. One design change leading to almost 5 years of loss for the planet each day.

To come this far, to show how you don't get accessibility? Which brilliant front-end engineer could come with such a horrific design modification? Does Google deliberately want us to fuddle with the links, aim for inefficiency, and make our browsing miserable?


Heisenberg
This is self-explanatory.
It is sad to see that the REAL heisenberg doesn't show up when you look for him. You get a character, (albeit one brilliantly played by Bryan Cranston).

Image search for "heisenberg tees"

Image search for "heisenberg"

Image search for "werner heisenberg"


If our heroes are chosen by how cool they are, let me remind the world that the cool of (Werner) Heisenberg exceeds any characters that could use his name. He was a proud father... of Quantum Mechanics... at the age of 28! A Nobel Prize at the age of 31! He used to hang out with Niels Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli - can you imagine a more glorious fellowship, if not in fiction! Oh, and when he'd get time off, he would go out mountaineering.


It's time the world gets this right.

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