Google’s most recent homepage redesign (pictured above) has been rolling out for quite some time. Quite frankly, I had pretty much forgotten about it, until I was presented with it this morning.
This tells me that there are still people who are just now getting this Google experience, which places navigation among Google services at the left-hand side of the screen.
On search results pages, this navigation menu (formerly accessible via a black bar at the top of the screen) appears when you mouse over the Google logo.
There is also a share box, to share updates, links, etc. from pretty much any page (across multiple Google products like Gmail, Google Reader, etc. For some reason, the design is still not integrated with YouTube.
There has historically been little Google branding throughout the YouTube experience, and surprisingly (given Google’s major push to integrate Google+ across products and tie everything together, including YouTube, via a singular Google account) this continues today. That said, YouTube is not without its Google+ integrations.
Are you seeing the new Google design? How long have you had it? Are you still waiting? Do you think it’s an improvement? Let us know in the comments.