Google misstep
For the record: Google hammering the Groups interface in their new GMail direction is awful. They've been smart not to do a lot with the Groups search interface since they acquired Deja. Tried to use the new version today to track down the kinds of things I've been searching for for year.
Totally frustrating.
It looks like there are listservs in there now, I don't know who the arbiter of which useful/useless lists are added, or if it's just Google's equivalent of Yahoo! Groups that are being added (ugh).
The majority of the results I stumbled through included a measurable amount of html markup. To further enhance readability, they're wrapping search result lines at about 70-80 chars. Genius. That's about 1/3 of the way across my screen, my mousewheel finger thanks you.
Seriously, does anyone have a clue about UX at Google? Did the IPO not bust out far enough for them to hire some usability consultants? Coming on the heels of Desktop Search and it's ridiculous disregard for things like, say, profiles, maybe Google's about as good as its web search and not much better?
Web Search, Froogle and Groups Search. Three things I find Google does very well. They're on the verge of making that number smaller by a third.
The good news is that someone will come along and address this if Google themselves doesn't. It's just the way these things work now. And in the meantime, I'll just slink off to a different locale for as long as I can.