The whitespace takes up a large portion of the screen especially on large monitors

Apr 12, 2012 11:03 GMT  ·  By

The new Google+ design may look pretty great, but there's one glaring problem with it that becomes obvious as soon as you load the new site, there's a big chunk of space left empty for no apparent reason.

The space between the feed and the chat box is as large if not larger than the feed, on large monitors, making Google+ look rather awkward.

It's so obvious and so annoying for many people that it's basically become a meme, #whitespace and #useforwhitespace are trending topics on the site.

There is one explanation for the whitespace, the new Google+ design is dynamic, i.e. it adjusts to the window or screen size. On a small screen, like that of a tablet, there's no whitespace at all.

In fact, if you make your browser window small enough, even the right chat column disappears. The design is also not a problem on older monitors with a 4:3 aspect ratio. It's only on wide monitors with high resolutions that whitespace takes up a large portion of the screen.

But apparently, this is not one big screw up or poor design, the space was left there on purpose and there are plans to fill it with something, but Google isn't saying what.

"We have plans for the column. Wish I could reveal everything all at once!," Google+'s Vic Gundotra wrote in a comment. He did say that it won't be filled with ads, but didn't offer any more clues.

One interesting and possible explanation is that it could eventually be used by third-party apps that could be installed like widgets on the site, similar to Facebook Timeline apps.

Another, perhaps more likely, explanation is that Google plans to add more features to Google+ and plans to fit them in the space left blank now. Finally, it could be that Google is just trying to fix a poor decision by saying that it has something planned, when it really didn't, so it doesn't look quite as bad.