Material Design has come to represent Google’s visual identity, but it’s taken a while to roll it out to all of its products – particularly on the desktop Web. But the company is now testing the look on its biggest product of all: Google.com
Users across the Web are reporting the redesign, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect. instead of a series of blue links on a white background, each search result is presented on its own white ‘card’, and the background is changed to a light grey – much like Google Now. The Settings cog icon has also been changed to the more mobile-like three-dot menu.
The biggest change might be relocating the information cards and ads that normally show up on the right-hand side of results – these are integrated right into search results with the redesign. That means more wasted space, but might also make people more likely to read the information in them.
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It’s not a hugely dramatic change, but given search results have kept the same basic look – blue and black text on a pure white background – since Google’s earliest days, it’s a nice change of pace.
Keep in mind only a small subset of users are seeing the feature, so you may not see the change anytime soon. Still, the company already implements Material Design on its mobile results and has been slowly adding it to more products, so it’s only a matter of time. We’ve contacted Google for more information and will update this post if we hear back.
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