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Google Makes Some Homepage Changes

I had to discover this while standing up on stage talking to a bunch of people. Google has revised their search engine’s front page so it’s a big different. The Froogle link has been replaced by a Video link. If you click on the More link over to the right, you’ll get a box with a few more links (including Froogle and Books) and a cheeky link called “Even More” that takes you to an entire page of Google services.

So Froogle has dropped down a tier, though it’s still in the “More” box. Does anybody use Froogle? I do some, but I find myself turning to Yahoo Shopping more; I just seem to get better results there.

Speaking of shopping with Google, does anybody remember “Google Catalogs” at http://catalogs.google.com/? It looks like it’s still active — there are catalogs from 2006 available — but there are plenty of older catalogs available as well. And of course it’s still in beta. (I liked Google Catalogs — it’s such a nifty way to browse, especially now that more and more people have broadband.)

I’m beginning to wonder if you can’t learn more about Google from what’s moribund than from what’s being actively pushed. Has the original Google Web API been updated lately? (They took the release date off the page.) Anything going on with Google Catalogs? How about the Google Directory?

Google has an astounding number of plates in the air. It’ll be interesting to see how many of those it can keep going, and to watch which products/offerings get less and less attention.

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