Live.com - too deep innovation

There is lot of areas where we should innovate the web search, except of one – user interface. It was Google’s big contribution to the internet community to go the simplest way. No flashing banners, no “sexy” layouts. Just a very intuitive text list. And a page navigation that uses our own browser functions. What could be nicer and more practical?

And now have a look at live.com. Its search results are displayed in a fancy window and end some 5cm above the bottom of page. You intuitively need to scroll – but oops! No scrollbar is there. Just two strange and almost invisible (because made in light grey on white background) arrows. Should we move them? Click on them? Click on the bar?

This is not the way to go. As Microsoft Monitor blog puts it: “I see the new doohickeys--slider and macros--as adding complexity without significantly improving search relevancy.”

Microsoft uses the extra white space under the search results for a message Help us improve. Interesting enough – if they really improve in this matter (and focus their innovation efforts to the right areas) the place for this message disappears automatically...