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Is Google Killing the new Image Search, now that people hate it?

by | Tuesday, 27th Jul 2010 | 20 Comments | Share

A few days ago, Google tried to make a vague attempt at beautifying its Image Search and complicated things in the process. Image searches became more taxing on the browser. Google Image search loaded all the pages in a single view and needed us to scroll down to see results. This was good for those with fast internet connections. However, on slow connections, it simply did not load any further pages apart from the first or, in some cases; it did not load the thumbnails after the first few pages. To add to that, the thumbnail preview on hover was a user-interface disaster and made it extremely hard to use Google Image Search anymore.

google-image-search

Put simply, people hate the new Google Image Search and switched to other alternatives quickly. Today, while making a quick search, I found that the old image search is back for me. I have not used the  URL trick or the switch to basic view either. That can mean only one thing. Google is reverting to the old Image Search.

Google could clearly see how this change was scaring away users. This is quite a fast response from Google. Lately, many changes made by Google are falling far below standards and are not really adding to the usability. However, I am happy to have the good old Image Search back.

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Chinmoy Kanjilal is a FOSS enthusiast and evangelist. He is passionate about Android. Security exploits turn him on and he loves to tinker with computer networks. He rants occasionally at Techarraz.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @ckandroid.

Chinmoy Kanjilal has written

The author of this post can be contacted at chinmoy@techie-buzz.com

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  1. smokes on July 27th, 2010 at 4:06 am #

    rofl

    'people hate new search'

    who said that?

    i like it.. its better than showing a few images per page..

    the infinite scrolling is better than that..

  2. Clif on July 27th, 2010 at 5:41 am #

    I still have the new version here. I like it. Do you think it's possible that Google is monitoring your download speed and offering the older version to slower networks?

    • Chinmoy Kanjilal on July 27th, 2010 at 6:23 am #

      It might be possible. I am not sure as to why this happened. Maybe, they will start changing things.the reversal in a few days and testing if people are coming back to using the earlier search.

  3. Wonka on July 27th, 2010 at 6:20 am #

    I like the new image search. The most important thing are the images and not the filenames, dates, urls, etc.

  4. Pallab De on July 27th, 2010 at 8:18 am #

    The only thing I hated about the new Google image search was that I needed to "Mark as Firefox" while using Opera to get access to it. Yeah, that's right. They were sniffing the useragents to block Opera.

    Otherwise, it's actually pretty good.

  5. tej on July 30th, 2010 at 8:38 am #

    yes it is true google's new fashion is not so appreciated and not so friendly for low bandwidth networks. Its Quite better to choose the standard version rather than copying from others

  6. Manes de Mad on July 30th, 2010 at 11:12 pm #

    I hate the new google image search, specially at low speeds "switch to basic mode" will not appear.
    what do they mean about killing people with this damn new search??
    help me to set basic mode as default search interface.

    • Sid on August 6th, 2010 at 5:26 am #

      Firefox users: A simple change to the browser configuration can restore the well-conceived Google Image Search interface:

      1. In the Firefox location (URL) bar, type "about:config" and press Enter.

      2. On the "about:config" window's "Filter:" line, type "agent".

      3. Find the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" entry, and double-click it.

      4. Replace the value shown in the "Enter string value" dialog with "Mozilla/2.0".

      5. Click the "OK" button to close the dialog box.

      6. Verify that the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" line now shows "Status" as "user set" instead of "default", and that "Value" is "Mozilla/2.0"

      7. Close the browser, re-open it, and try a Google image search. The bad interface should not appear.

      NOTE 1: The Firefox configuration change described above causes your browser to report that it is not newer than Mozilla 2.0. An appropriately-programmed server might then send pages free of interface elements that aren't handled well by older browsers, like the annoying pop-out images of Google's new image-search interface.

      NOTE 2: To reset the configuration change back to the default, right-click the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" line and choose "Reset".

      NOTE 3: A Firefox update is likely to overwrite the above-described change. After installing a Firefox update, simply repeat the change.

      — 2010aug06(09:19)-sls

  7. Wisco on August 8th, 2010 at 11:34 am #

    I wish. The best remedy I've been able to find is a greasemonkey script. You can switch back to the old search, but you can't make it stick and you have to wait for all the bazillion images to load, since it's at the bottom of the page.

    So far, I find no evidence that google has any intention to stop sucking.

  8. ron on August 12th, 2010 at 7:02 pm #

    mine was like that to it went back to the good old way for awhile now the AWEFUL crapy new image seach is back!!!!!!!! what the hell happened google images! it used to be GREAT!!!! google is the only search engine i use! now its ruined. i hate having to scroll forever, pictures take to long to load, it looks sloppy, hard to see all the pictures are cramed on the page the orginal was clear and structured and provided infomation under the picture, now i have to hover over it? is google trying to make customers go elsewhere? there was NOTHING WRONG with the orginal!!!!! if it aint broke dont fix it!!!!! please give us the option to save the orginal version as a preset! until that i will no longer be using google images. goodbye google hello alta vista and yahoo

  9. evilrix on September 19th, 2010 at 1:48 pm #

    This Chrome extension will disable the new image search.
    https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fejbaidenncbdbjjdkgnbbhbgnpkmhho?hl=en