14 DAY TRIAL // Only a short while ago, Google rolled out a rather big redesign for its search site. It is part of the massive redesign effort across all Google properties. But even as Google is working on getting everyone else to upgrade, it's still not satisfied with the Search site and is experimenting with several variations of the design as well as with some additional features, like infinite scroll.
One of the latest experiments to seen in the wild is a stripped down version of the site which gets rid of the icons in the left sidebar as well as some of the elements in the search results, including the +1 button.
The unofficial Google Operating System blog spotted the new experiment and shared some screenshots of it. This latest experiment is one of the most thorough.
One of the things you may notice is that there are no more icons for categories in the left sidebar. Last year, when Google.com got a massive redesign, the permanent sidebar was introduced along with colorful icons for all of the categories, News, Video and so on.
More recently, when the new, Google+ inspired color scheme was introduced, the icons were all turned gray, or red for the currently selected section. But it seems that Google is thinking about getting rid of them altogether.
As Google has been adding more and more functionality, the search result snippets became crowded with links. The site has been moving to get rid of some of them and it's taking things further in the latest experiment.
Not only are the links to Similar pages relegated to the Instant Preview overlay, the Google+ button and the link to the Cached version of the site have been moved as well.
This latest experiment also uses a fixed header, which stays put as you scroll down the search results. This has been tested in a separate experiment before. Like Google OS notes, this fixed header would work perfectly with an infinite scroll feature, which is actually being tested in yet another experiment.
