14 DAY TRIAL // With a massive number of engineers, a huge user base and enough money to buy Facebook and a couple of Twitters, Google can afford to experiment. And it does; every new feature, every new product is tested with a small subset of its users before it is even announced. Of course, many of these experimental features may never get implemented but Google can and does go wild with some of them. Even its iconic homepage isn't safe from constant tweaking and its minimalistic look is taken to extreme with a new set of experimental designs that have been popping up in the wild.
No sane person would call Google's homepage crowded but even the bare-bones functionality and features are too much it seems for some people at Google and the search engine is now testing a new design that takes the whole concept to its absolute bare minimum removing everything but the logo and the search box. Everything else, not that there's that much to begin with, is hidden away until the user moves the mouse over the page at which point all of the links and the buttons are visible again.
But it looks like Google may be testing several versions of the functionality, as it usually does, and in one instance, like TechCrunch found, the “Search” and “I'm Feeling Lucky” buttons don't show up along with the other links on the page. Or it may very well be a bug, but we probably won't know until Google decides to make some sort of announcement, which may be a while off.
The tests are limited to a few users so there aren't that many chances to spot the new design in the wild. Still, it would be a pretty radical move from Google to strip everything down to the bare bones but a rather pointless one as well if the links just pop up when the user actually tries to interact with the home page. In any case, it shows that despite its size it isn't afraid to tinker even with its most identifiable product.
