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February 9, 2011

Google Tests a Navigation Bar Integrated with Google Profiles

Google has been testing different versions of a new navigation bar that removes link underlining and adds a menu for the features that now clutter the bar.

The latest iteration of Google's experiment replaces your email address with your name and shows the photo from your Google Profile. Right now, creating a Google Profile is optional, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that this will change. If there's one thing that unifies almost all Google services, that's the navigation bar and it makes sense to add social features to the persistent bar.



{ Thanks, Aaron and Ameet. }

28 comments:

  1. "...it makes sense to add social features to the persistent bar."

    Alex, please don't encourage them. I think there are still many people out there who just want to be able to use the excellent tools Google provides, without having to think about all this "social" nonsense.

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  2. Hello,

    Do you know if and how can we test these new navigation bars?

    Thanks,
    T.

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  3. "...Google Profile is optional"

    And it best stay that way or there will be many annoyed users forced to fill in random stuff.

    There is a reason many people don't use facebook.
    I would take Google as a company that understands this, thus making this optional.

    shoo wannabe-facebook-bar!

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  4. I wish users could customize the navigation bar. Looking at the screenshots, I use all links but Shopping.

    Would be cool to "test" this new layout.

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  5. My wish for the Nav bar would be that it can be customized for a Doamin - so we can put the link to our Intranet on the Nav bar, together with any other organization specific links to help our staff, parents and students

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  6. this navigational bar doesn't integrate well with google reader or any other webapp at all.
    Infact this hasn't been implemented with any other google webapp.
    Since this is still being tested i guess they will give a overhaul to all of their services.
    That would give all their services a uniformity.

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  7. This bar 'd be great with a gmail notification and a chat notification (options).

    Customizable nav bar 'd be cool.

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  8. Instead of having a full customizable nav bar, I think what'd be neat if they'd group their services then allow you to switch between the groups.

    So, search would be one group, with web search, images, Maps, shopping, etc.

    Productivity would be another, with Gmail, Docs, Apps, Groups, Sites, and Calendar.

    Entertainment would be the last one, with Reader, YouTube, Books, Blogger, and Picasa Web.

    It makes sense to have them grouped as related properties, and then have each one be consistent for each property. Like, right now, each service has its own customized nav bar, different from all the rest. But this way, the nav bar would be entirely consistent between services in a group. Gmail and Docs would have the same nav bar.

    Just a thought I had.

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  9. wow awesome...its look like in twitter :D
    nice nice nice \m/

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  10. Andrex said...


    Your plan makes sense. An I suspect the way Google may go, eventually.

    The more I look an see hits of google plans the more they make sense.
    I suspect there is more features to be added to the bar, aka seeing what friends are online, gmail/Buzz notifications an also the mysterious sharean loop button which did show up on one screen shot a couple of months but does not seem to appear here.

    I do hope Google plans to update it profile page in the future, an may be let users have just one profile page if they want, having a different profile page for each service is annoying.

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  11. will it be realease at Google I/O ?!

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  12. God, more imposed social networking crap. Why does Google assume that all of its users are 13 year-old girls who have to share every trivial thought that comes into their heads? After the Buzz fiasco I really thought about switching out of Google; it's getting harder and harder to maintain any sort of autonomy--let alone anonymity--with them. Soon it'll be impossible to go online at all without notifying 400 of your closest "friends."

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  13. you’ve got great elements there and I do like how you encourage the readers to take the time to think.

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  14. I approve, the nav bar is in need for renovation so is the profile page, and connecting both of them seems logical so is connecting all properties to the user profile.

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  15. Ragnis said...
    How can I see it?

    become a google employee.

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  16. It would be alright if it gave you options of changing the color. Right now it is totally messing up the look of my customized search pages.

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  17. Don't like this at all, especially since it was unannounced and nearly impossible to find information about. First thought was "why Google? I don't want to look like social media nonsense" second thought was "keylogger virus?"

    Bad change, especially since it's not consistent. No thank you.

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  18. Any status update on this? I used Google Shopping with Google Checkout for the first time ever today, and saw the change described. I'm running Chrome on Windows 7.

    I hadn't read this article, or anything about the change, and it was unsettling. Because I was using Google Checkout, my first thought was fear of a browser exploit (even though that didn't make sense) but I was afraid of payment info security being compromised. However, the HTTPS and green lock symbol remained.

    It would've been nice to know about this from Google in advance! Now that I know, I'm not concerned, for me it doesn't cause problems (that I can tell, yet).

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  19. I got this new navigation bar today for my account, seems different and nice :)

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  20. Bring back the old please. New looks very scary :(

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  21. Creating a Google Profile is not optional .
    Everybody that has a Google Account have a Google Profile too .

    You can only turn it private, but always will exist .

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  22. Can see this at two Computers but not my desktop... Not that it's a problem but I'd like to figure out why this happens. Anyone?

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  23. Hi Manos,

    I have the same issue. On Ipad or other PCs I can see this new navbar but right on my laptop I cannot see this. Anyone?

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  24. Google is always developing smth new but "new" does not mean "good" as you know what I'm talking about. I personally do not prefer to create the account, what's the reason as it's the same as Facebook?

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  25. Yeah,i have experiencing with this toolbar.So far,seems ok.

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