the webthinking blog

I know, I’ve been missing in action for a while, business school keeps me busy. Anyhow, this can be an interesting case study: how can Google not get the social factor? Why would Google force me to change their own signature white homepage? Why shifting their core values?

Remember the mishap around Buzz? It’s been a few months since then. You’d think someone will learn something after all that buzz. As I was saying, this can be an interesting case study. According to Marissa’a post, the answer to the above question is “…art, the art of a homepage”. Noble idea to support the artists and their work, wrong strategy. And wrong execution. White page got “binged“.

The blog post reads “Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users.” You’d think Google spent quite a bit of effort and money on this experiment. And all went wrong because of one single link ? Google cannot get one single link right on the homepage?

One thing is certain: Google is far from getting social. Even more, it makes you wonder what’s next? Your Gmail or your whole search history go public? Too bad.

Here’s my version of the homepage art. Back to my real case study.