When I posted about the new Google Home Page API last night, I said to myself that Google Blogoscoped editor, Philipp Lenssen, was going to have a widgets available within a few hours. Well, it appears I was correct. Today, Lenssen has already developed two widgets for the Google Personalized Home Page.
First, one that shows a total Google page count (oh no, let’s not get the total count debate going again, at least for a few more weeks. (-: and another widget to search Amazon.com. When people ask me, “When do you sleep,” I just show them Philipp’s great work. Talk about output!
Btw, this came to mind as I was blogging this item. An A9 user could search Google (A9 uses the Google web and image databases), Amazon, and many other databases by just checking boxes and clicking search. Plus, if we use the “could my mom do it” test, I think she would have more success (at this point) going right to A9 and selecting Amazon or “books” than she would copying and pasting code on the Google Personalized Home Page that she would have to know about in the first place. Yes, this will all get easier for the typical user but then the question is will mom (or anyone else) know about it and then decide to spend the time doing it? As I said last night, Google’s clean and uncluttered home page is, in my mind, one of the things that got them where they are today. Just like people don’t want to look and realize that other engines offer uncluttered home page UI’s, they might field timid about changing the look of what they know so well, even if it is personalized.
Of course, one obvious question to my comments about my mom using A9 would be, does she know about A9 in the first place? I doubt it. Yes, she knows about Google. Even my father, Mr. “I’m afraid of computers” is very aware of Eric, Sergey, Larry and team.
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