Though it made its name as a search engine, Google has grown to be much more. With services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, and Google Base you can now spend most of your time online under the Google.com domain if you so choose. Slowly but surely, Google has become a true web portal.
There’s an irony to that, because when the Google guys first hit the scene, the company was adamant about its focus on search. At a time when Yahoo, MSN, and all the me-too portals were crowding their pages with links to web mail, chat rooms, and dozens of banner ads, Google became famous for its minimalist home page.
The lean, advertisement-free home page said much about Google’s philosophy. The message was clear: “We’re focused on search and nothing will corrupt the purity of our search engine.”
But as Google expanded into more areas, the spare design of its home page actually became a problem. How do you make people aware of all your services while keeping the home page uncluttered?
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