I just read this piece on bad design. It’s an interesting read, but I think it lacks some historical context. Andy faults Google’s design as “unremarkable and poorly laid out.” I agree that it contains a lot of design afterthoughts, but I attribute that to their incredible growth over the last few years.
Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.
Now, compare those with Google, circa 1999, or 2000, which was when I recall it gaining serious traction. There’s just no comparison. It’s minimal design was remarkable. Many people switched to Google just to escape the portal bloat that had made the other search engines less useful. It was so successful that everyone else copied them.
While it’s certainly true now that their design isn’t very well thought out, I can’t agree with the cavalier dismissal of their design as “unremarkable.”