Google recently made a change to their main search page. Everything besides logo, search box, and buttons is now hidden until the page is moused over.

<rant>
What the fuck? Your search page was so simple. So clean. There was nothing to fix, nothing to make simpler. There was minimalist navigation on the top, and a few links on the bottom. It worked very well and was very good design.

You took something very simple, and tried to make it simpler. You have not succeeded. You took what you view as a problem and swept it under the rug. Your homepage isn’t simpler at all…it just LOOKS simpler at first glance. Then with first mouseover, it fades in?! What the fuck are you thinking?

This is the kind of childish effect a high-schooler learning HTML 4 would hack into his first homepage with shitty javascript. It looks nifty the FIRST TIME but after that it’s completely obnoxious and frustrating. I don’t want to wait to click on Images or News. Even if it’s 1/2 second.

To use the words of a blog commenter: “Imagine being at your desk preparing to work, but the desk chair would not appear until you try to sit down.” This is exactly how I feel.

If you really want to keep your juvenile display of javascript skillz, please give people an option to disable it so we don’t have to keep a bucket nearby in case new the homepage induces violent bouts of vomiting. Until then, I (and several others from the sounds of it) will be using Bing.
</rant>