Google’s New ‘Animated’ Home Page In Korea
May 29, 2007 at 7:15pm ET by Greg Sterling
Google has launched a new home page for Korea that departs from Google’s “classic,” minimalist home page approach. The new look features animated product buttons below the search box and will become the default home page in the country, a move Google is comfortable with given the near universal presence of broadband.
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(The icons are represented above as colored dots below the search box, but appear as you mouse over them on the live page.) The new home page went live in in conjunction with a 5pm U.S. Pacific time speech in Seoul by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Google’s classic home page was intended to load quickly, according to Craig Silverstein, Google employee number one and unofficial Google historian (officially, Technology Director at Google). Google’s personalized iGoogle home page also offers a more graphically rich experience, featuring multiple themes that users can choose from.
The new, animated Google Korea home page is intended to help Google better compete in the country where it seeks to gain market share.
“It was important where our classic minimalism wasn’t working that we adapt,” Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google, told Danny Sullivan in a briefing earlier today.
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Omg, I read a while back about the idea of using highly interactive and rich ads for users in the asian countries. I heard that China as well as Japan would be the most highly regarded targets for rich media ads. I can see based on those facts/assumptions why Google would go about making their homepage animated and interactive for their Korean users. Users in the asian countries adore ads filled with animation and media. Pop-ups even still work in those countries and they are loved…Crazy. A+ for Google
This seems very much like a test system Google put up for one day only if I recall in March 2005 - that mirrored the Apple MacOS Dock. You can still see what this was like at http://joeanderson.co.uk/google/ and although it is not the same as the Korea system it is very similar.
Typical for Google to implement the animations only for the front page. The animations are not used on the images, news, groups or blogsearch page. It’s just like they are scared that people won’t like it so that they can easy take it offline again. The big struggle with the implementation of there corparte identity.
However I do like this approach with the animations. Like iMarketingGuru said is it great for the Korean users, but I would also be a nice extra feature for other countries.