For this blog entry, I had to choose a website that was one of the best that I have ever seen and one that was the worst that I’ve ever seen, so I decided to compare two of the more famous internet search engines. I chose Yahoo! as an example of what all websites should be and Google as the last possible, worst choice, I absolutely can’t stand website that drives me crazy beyond belief. Now before the entire world comes to an end once I say Google sucks, let me explain first by showing you what a good website should be.
Society makes me feel like I’m the only person that likes Yahoo! better than Google, but there are a few very good reasons for this. The first area is design. Once you go to www.yahoo.com, you are immediately engulfed by pictures, colorful texts, a Pandora of content choice, and a wave of personizable choices. For all of the Google fans out there, let me say this one more time: bright colors and lots of pictures makes me happy. Every category on the left hand side has a graphic next to it, all of the top news stories have a photo that scrolls in a slideshow, and the most pressing things that I want to see (such as email and weather) are right there on the page. It’s incredible. Now, on the other hand, when I log into Google I become depressed. It’s a giant white background with a few hyperlinked words, and if I’m lucky they may have changed the way that the word Google is formatted on the page. It’s plain; it’s boring; and during the winter seeing more white just makes me more depressed. You would think with a workplace as colorful as Google, they could make a website that has some colors other than white and weblink blue.
Second is architecture. Once you get into the nitty-gritty of the how the site is laid out in terms of subpages, both are pretty similar. However, I have no idea how to actually get to Google’s subpages. All of their material is difficult, deep, and hard to find, especially the material that is embedded deep into subpages that are part of Google. But here is my favorite one. Type the word “Shopping” into Google and see what comes up. The third entry is Yahoo! shopping and the fourth one is Google shopping. Yes, on Google’s own website they prioritized Yahoo! higher than themselves. They should have just capitulated the internet search engine supremacy battle because that’s pretty ridiculous. I will say, though, that if you navigate Google, it may have more subpages; but I’ve already gotten bored from their awful layout before I could figure out how to reach their subpages.
Finally, third is content. This is the one that is iffy with me. Google has many great forms of content, such as Google Docs and Google Maps, but are they separate entities from Google? For the purpose of this argument I say yes, since I am only judging the quality of the homepage search engine. As per that course of analysis, the only measurable content is what you see when you first go that search engine’s homepage or what comes up when you type in something into the search engine. On the latter point, the two are virtually indistinguishable except to computer programmers who endlessly try to refine the accuracy of the search results. I don’t do programming, so as far as I can tell, they’re about the same. In terms of content on the initial layout page, once again Yahoo wins. Yahoo has a much wider selection of things to immediately choose from on its homepage, ranging from the news to the best new movies. Google has like 5 or 6 really boring choices with no pictures or graphics. In fact, it’s so boring I would have no desire to explore their content.
Which brings me to my final point. Google reminds me of that computer programmer kid on your classes who could design a program to do anything, but only (s)he knew how to design it or use it. It was always really boring and bland, because only the science mattered; aesthetics were not important. That’s really what Google is. It’s the boring, bland, computer programmer version of the internet. And the only reason that I ever use Google is because one of its co-founders is a Michigan alum. But seriously, Google sucks so much that not even that is enough to make me use it on a day-to-day basis.
Andrew--I have to admit that I hadn't used Yahoo! since middle school. As a result, re-visiting the site was an interesting experience that made me realize why I love Google. Yahoo! is just so...90s. Ok, yes, the photos are nice and major news topics of the day are all there on the homepage, but doesn't it feel a little antiquated? Maybe it's the icons in the top right, or the font that hasn't changed in years, or even the fact that each section of the page is placed in boxes. Google feels fresh--although blank--because it is free of all the information and distraction of the Yahoo! homepage. I think what it really comes down to is design preference. My feeling is that if you don't like a websites homepage design, you probably aren't going to go any further in exploring the content or architecture.
ReplyDeleteKudos on exploring Yahoo! I appreciated the trip down memory lane.