MS has a googlish start page

[nevetS]

http://www.start.com/3/

It's also a great alternative to search.msn.com - kind of like googles preview. Playing around with it, it looks pretty damn cool actually.

You can pin search results to the home page so it's an easy way of tracking. I think I'm going to give this a try for a few days as my primary SE.

[City2]

Thats a cool search although I wouldnt use it myself. I love that popup effect :P

[australianseo]

yea it does look googlish...

[SEbasic]

Man, AJAX is just too cool...

That's it - I'm learning how to work with it when I get home tonight...

Seriously - It's gotta be the future...

[robokoder]

Google is nowhere near as cluttered

[pcdoc]

favorable mention at http://seroundtable.com/ for both the start page and dp.

[web-rover]

it's ok...clean i guess

[forkqueue]

Kind of kool, but also way too slow to be useful.

Google wins because of its simplicity. They only use the funky Ajax stuff when there is a functionality benefit, not just because.

[SEbasic]

I'd say that there was a functionality benefit to be seen here.

At the end of the day, this isn't designed for users who wan't a 100% clean start page - this is for portal users who want to be able to customise the way their home page looks.

It works really well IMO - a lot better than the Google "ig" page, just because this has more options available for customisation.

[mopacfan]

Originally Posted by robokoder

Google is nowhere near as cluttered

They never are, and I think this is one of the main reasons they are so popular. I know I hate all the portal junk and other crap other se's put all over the place.

[SEbasic]

http://search.msn.com/

It's not exactly cluttered...

I don't understand why everyone says G is so clean - It gets worse all the time.

Danny Sullivan wrote an article about "Invisible Tabs" ages ago - It was like a premonition (Kinda )

Look how much worse Google has got -

Eng of '99
http://web.archive.org/web/199911290...13.google.com/

End of 2k
http://web.archive.org/web/200012031...com/index.html

End of '01
http://web.archive.org/web/200112172...ww.google.com/

End of '02
http://web.archive.org/web/200212041...com/index.html

End of '03
http://web.archive.org/web/200312301...ww.google.com/

End of '04
http://web.archive.org/web/200412041...ww.google.com/

Now
http://www.google.com

IMO, the http://search.msn.com page is cleaner than the Google Home page.

And the start.com page has MUCH better personalisation options than google.com/ig

MSN is looking good to me.

[Crazy_Rob]

Look how much worse Google has got -

Worse?

[SEbasic]

Links all over the damn page now...

It used to just be a simple search box...

Now I have personalised links - log out - blah - blah................

I guess all I'm saying that the only thing that makes google look clean is the boring white background.

There is still LOADS of information on the page - it just doesn't look busy - But neither does MSN, which has LESS information on the page (At least they hide it until a user actually wants to see it).

[Crazy_Rob]

Originally Posted by SEbasic

Links all over the damn page now...

It used to just be a simple search box...

There are 12-15 total links (depending on your settings). In 2002 there were 11 links.

If you bunch up all of the stuff on Google's home page, they're only using about 25% of the page (logo included).

(MS has more links than Google!)

[SEbasic]

Ok, ok...

I'm just sick of people slagging off MS because Google is supposed to be "The Cleanest" when I really don't think it is when compared to the "Search" index pages as opposed to the portal index pages.

http://my.yahoo.com/
http://www.start.com
http://www.google.com/ig/

IMO, MSN looks better than the rest - and it has the functionality too, where google really lacks.

[Crazy_Rob]

I disagree with pretty much everything you've posted above.

And just wait until MS adds a big ass banner to the top of the page like Yahoo! has.

[SEbasic]

Fair enough

I don't think they'll add the banner - Wait 'till longhorn (Or whatever it's called now) - then we'll see.

But seriously - the functionality on the personalised G home page is rubbish in comparison to Y and MSN... Just a shame about their search results.

[robokoder]

I love the google setup- so simple!