[Sigia-l] Google introduces animated icons on homepage

[Tim Beadle]

On 25/07/07, Manu Sharma <manu at orangehues.com> wrote:
> Google Inc. is testing a new homepage design in Taiwan and Hong Kong
> that takes advantage of faster broadband speeds in those markets,
> one of the company's founders said Thursday.
> [...]
> The site's new design ditches Google's famously clean homepage
> design, adding a row of icons above the search bar and a row of
> animated icons below it.
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134854-page,1/article.html

That makes sense. I have a colleague who's learning Chinese at the
moment, and he's noticed that web sites in Asia tend to be much busier
than those in the West, as the large number of links give the
impression to the user that they're getting a lot of value from the
site.

He wrote:

"Many Chinese websites look like this : http://www.cbe21.com/
Most Chinese websurfers don't feel they are getting value unless they are
presented with a huge multitude of links (they consider many of our
Western websites too sparse by far).

Maybe this will change over time as they get more used to using search
engines, but for now the majority are far happier running though reams of
links and following chains of links. Just thought you might find that
interesting and indeed I have talked to a couple who have landed on
Western sites where a search and discover approach is assumed and they
were left feeling confused and cheated (there again searching in Chinese
leaves me feeling much the same way)."

Tim