How Google Got Its New Look

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The focus on metrics is a deeply ingrained part of Google's culture. Brin and co-founder Larry Page are both engineers, and they've been consistent in expressing a belief that form must always follow function. (Page has gone so far as to wonder why the home page needs anything except an empty search box.) That doesn't mean designers have to like it. Douglas Bowman, Google's first visual designer, left the company in March 2009—and lit the Web equivalent of a bonfire on his way out the door. In a post on stopdesign.com, Bowman claimed that at Google, data "becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions." He noted that one project was delayed when a team couldn't decide between two blues—so it tested 41 different shades between them. "I had a recent debate over whether a border should be three, four, or five pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case," wrote Bowman, who is now the creative director at Twitter.

Other ex-Google design stars acknowledge that the emphasis on data can be grating. Jeffrey Veen, who joined Google as design director in 2006, says "the designers I worked with were fantastic but very formally trained in human computer interaction rather than having MFAs. That frames how design happens at Google." Veen, who left the company in 2008, adds: "None of the colleagues I would want to hire would be able to get a job at Google because of the computer-science-based requirements."

Mayer, the vice-president of search products, doesn't buy the criticism. "We're not curtailing instinct at all," she says. "We need that to fuel the innovation engine that yields great designs from Google. What we can do is use the power of the Internet and the measurability of it to figure out in a scientific way if something is a good idea or not." Wiley, V8's chief designer, insists he's comfortable with the mission and understands that search design is not intended to wow users. "It's like lighting design or sound design in a movie," he says. "If you're sitting watching a movie and you say, 'that's really great sound design!' then that's probably not right.…I don't want someone to say 'look at this gorgeous search results page!' I want them to say 'where's my…?' And click, they've gone."

In the period leading up to the rollout, changes continued. Some were major: The launch date slipped five times. A plan to include a widget underneath the search query box so users could tailor results to their location was dropped after engineers decided the technology didn't perform consistently enough. A feature offering users a way to look for similar types of results was renamed from "Not Entirely Unlike" (an oblique homage to sci-fi author Douglas Adams) to the less whimsical, more intuitive "Something Different."

As the redesign was being unveiled to the world via a blog post penned by Mayer, the team continued working. For the engineers, launch is the most critical and nerve-racking time. "We'll definitely be biting our fingernails. You can't just turn this on with a switch," says Gaylinn. Even as the team breaks up and moves onto different projects, changes will continue. "In many ways the project never really completely ends," says Janakiram. "There are always improvements to be made."

Helen Walters is the editor of Innovation and Design at Bloomberg BusinessWeek .

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