Here's what I get. The ad isn't nearly so big, and there's personalized local results. (Which I'm now noticing in the 2012 screencap, but it's kind of crappy to ignore that the results are actually relevant to your location now. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7236... (Of course, with a proper ad blocker enabled, all of the red bits vanish. ;D)
The ancillary service links (News/Maps/Mail/...) are also negotiably functional, rather than clutter. In either 08 or 12 version of Google, clicking on the "Maps" link would display a larger version of what's in the sidebar of 2012.
Arguably leaving the map as elective information helps keep results streamlined. I was kind of ambivalent about masking the local map, but decided to keep the comparison strictly like-to-like.
I see this and I think to myself, "how dare they! How dare Google provide me a free service such as the proprietary algorithm they developed to search the whole of the internet, and then try and SELL ME SOMETHING?" I mean, it's just outrageous.
I get 1 link to PizzaPizza (as I'm in Canada), 1 link to Wikipedia, 7 map links to pizza places near me right now, and then 3 more links to pizza websites, then the navigation to page two. No ads because of AdBlock Plus and the Google Ad remover script in Greasemonkey. People may want to bitch less and just install the above 2 add-ons. Makes for a quieter internet all around.
@ZackReplica When we got back to the apartment we were staying in in Toronto after four days at the FTAA demonstrations in Quebec City, I ordered pepperoni pizza from PizzaPizza. It was like, the best pizza I'd ever had. Seriously.
I'm actually waaay out here on the Left Coast, and we don't have PizzaPizza out here, but I would get the link to it as it's Tranna's reminder to the rest of Canada that it's the centre of the universe. Whaddya do, except go to Nat's New York Pizzeria for mind-numbingly awesome thin crust pizza.
I'm not anti-advertising. I especially mind Google's ads the least. I don't consider this an anti-advertising thing -- if I did, I'd probably have spent some time trying to find a ca. 2001 Google search results page.
It's a lot more about Google's implied content priority (where, by convention, upper left == most important, lower right == least important), and how this compares to the user's. A user searching for pages with content that matches their query, implicitly they want to see as many of those results with the least effort possible. The farther down the page that list starts, the more effort is needed to see those results.
The user of Adblock is as much as admitting that they disagree with this prioritization of content. Similarly, one can easily script up something in Greasemonkey or Chrome or etc. to shave away other content they don't like. And all of these approaches are effectively privileged methods of dealing with the problem: Users of mobile devices, certain assistive devices, those who are insufficiently tech-savvy or lacking sufficient privs on their computer to install workarounds are stuck with what they see above.
This page has zero hits and zero saves and fewer views that any of my other posts. Doesn't really look like it's really working on the drama and popularity fronts.
If you're craving a PizzaPizza but you're stuck in the US, go to a Little Caesar's. It's the same thing.
Arguably leaving the map as elective information helps keep results streamlined. I was kind of ambivalent about masking the local map, but decided to keep the comparison strictly like-to-like.
No ads because of AdBlock Plus and the Google Ad remover script in Greasemonkey.
People may want to bitch less and just install the above 2 add-ons. Makes for a quieter internet all around.
I love Canada.
It's a lot more about Google's implied content priority (where, by convention, upper left == most important, lower right == least important), and how this compares to the user's. A user searching for pages with content that matches their query, implicitly they want to see as many of those results with the least effort possible. The farther down the page that list starts, the more effort is needed to see those results.
See another illustration of this, comparing various search engine results ca. 2005:
http://startupboy.com/2005...
The user of Adblock is as much as admitting that they disagree with this prioritization of content. Similarly, one can easily script up something in Greasemonkey or Chrome or etc. to shave away other content they don't like. And all of these approaches are effectively privileged methods of dealing with the problem: Users of mobile devices, certain assistive devices, those who are insufficiently tech-savvy or lacking sufficient privs on their computer to install workarounds are stuck with what they see above.
This page has zero hits and zero saves and fewer views that any of my other posts. Doesn't really look like it's really working on the drama and popularity fronts.
If you're craving a PizzaPizza but you're stuck in the US, go to a Little Caesar's. It's the same thing.