Google is still wondering if it should make major changes to its homepage. The last experiment we saw filled the usually stark white page with info cards showing things like the weather and stocks, but this new experiment, spotted by the site MSPoweruser, has a much bigger focus on news.
Instead of a homepage featuring only the Google logo, a search box, and a few buttons, this latest experiment looks a lot more like the “Google Discover” newsfeed you get on the Google mobile app. That means rows of news articles that Google has algorithmically detected will interest you, often with wild month-to-month quality swings in the sites it promotes. To the right of the newsfeed is a stack of “at a glance” cards featuring sports scores, stocks, and the weather. The change makes Google look a lot busier—and a lot more like Bing and Yahoo.
The Verge reached someone at Google about this and was told it’s an experiment currently being run in India.
Just like last year’s info card experiment, this homepage test could go nowhere and might never see a wide launch. Even if it does launch, it could just be an optional setting or alternative mode of Google.com, with the traditional white page still as an option. Once upon a time, Google worked that way with iGoogle, where you could customize your Google homepage with various news, weather, and stock widgets.
It is very strange that the mobile app and desktop website are so different now, though. If Google Discover has some kind of business reason to exist on Google’s mobile app, it seems like the same justification should apply to Google.com, too. And with the Google of 2023 so willing to sacrifice old traditions in the name of revenue, maybe a big change to the homepage will finally happen.
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