Google has a well-deserved reputation for ease of use. They worked with Jakob Neilsen to make their home page as easy to use as possible. When I met Craig Silverstein in 2003 he explained that they wanted to get people off Google and to a site that they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
In part their reputation comes from the fact that their page loads very quickly. Partly, it comes from the fact that it is not overloaded with links and information that is designed to keep the visitor on the site. Yahoo! and MSN take this approach (and do a good job with it too).
But is Google’s design the best it can be? Designer Andy Rutledge doesn’t think so. He has proposed a redesign of the famous Google homepage that, I think, is a considerable improvement. He also applies the same logic to eBay but this, I think, is slightly less successful because so much of the eBay experience exists behind the home page.
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