Comments on: Facebook, Google, and the data design disaster

Why it's important for a Silicon Valley bigwigs like Facebook or Google to rein in that obsessive quest for information ownership: user-friendliness can fall by the wayside.

[daveHillman]

Many complain about information overload and then add a new toy everytime it comes out (look at Twitter growth...). Question may be in a universal interface for digesting ALL information.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Hard to believe Google would hire a professional to design, and then not let him design. How dumb is that?

Good article by the way...

[scammarata]

Google is successful because their search service is incredibly fast, delivers relevant results, and has a simple user interface. They provide an excellent service free of charge. I hope they keep it fast, relevant and free for a long, long time.

[gregorytga]

Y'know, its interesting to see website designed by a quality designer and one decided by a talented engineer/programmer.

You tend to end up with something like Vimeo and YouTube.

[Been_there_Saw_it_before]

One good example is the home page of Google compared to Yahoo. Google is simple and straightforward while Yahoo is so cluttered I get overloaded just looking at it. Where is the kitchen sink? Did I miss it?

[cvaldes1831]

To be fair, Microsoft's Hotmail team (whatever they called it, probably Windows Mail Live) wrangled with similar issues: some aggressive design changes upset the user base, regardless of how the engineers explain it. The vast majority of users aren't Facebook/MSN/Yahoo/Google/Twitter/whatever engineers.

A pox on product marketing managers who try to justify this sort of behavior.

"Give the customers what they want."

[t8]

I wouldn't use Google if the blue line was the wrong shade.

[skrubol]

I don't have a big problem with the new Facebook (I do think it's harder to do a lot of things than it used to be,) but I have a problem with how often they overhaul the interface. Change can be good, but when it's too significant and too often, it's just too much to relearn for casual users (people who aren't on it every day.)