San Francisco – Sprucing up its famously plain website, Google Inc. is offering an option that plants its Internet search box in panoramic settings that change with the time and the weather.
The colorful graphics to be unveiled today represent the latest bit of pizazz to be served up on Google’s home page as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company caters to the digerati who want to customize everything from cellphones to computers.
While most of Google’s users remain content seeing little more than the company logo and the search box that has anchored its home page for nearly a decade, millions of others have created log-ins that enable them to select from a variety of features that appear with each visit. These bells and whistles – introduced nearly two years ago – include stock quotes, local weather and news headlines.
Google’s new package of decorations, also known as “skins,” are designed to make the home page feel even more homey, said Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president of search products and user experience.
“Google has become the doorway to the Internet for a lot of people, so we want to make (the site) feel more like an online living room,” Mayer said. “We feel we are personalizing things in a very tasteful and usable way.”
The use of more graphics also illustrates Google’s evolution from a once-pure Internet search engine into an all-purpose website that offers e-mail, news, photo sharing, instant messaging, shopping and mapping services.
The diversification over the past five years has raised worries that Google might be overextending itself, but the expansion hasn’t hurt so far.
