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May 21, 2011

Google's Black Navigation Bar

For some reason, the navigation bar displayed at the top of Google's "connected accounts" page is special. The bar has a black background and grey links. Hopefully, this is just a bug and not a redesigned navigation bar.


The "connected accounts" page lets you add accounts from services like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Yelp and use them to personalize search results. This way, you can include your accounts from other social sites without adding them to your Google Profile.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

51 comments:

  1. Looks like this blog become a part of Facebook's anti-Google sponsored campaign. Am I wrong?

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  2. you wrong, this blog give you latest information about Google world :-)
    And he is always the first one, that revealed the latest news (and then the Google official blog)

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  3. Maybe it's an experiment in themes. Just like in Gmail or iGoogle, where you can apply a theme, maybe they're experimenting with these themes actually affecting the look of the navigation bar and this is some sort of bizarre left-over of the experimenting.

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  4. I doubt it a bug.
    I is probably a redesign, or at least prototype of a redesign that got made standard by accident.

    Personally I do not mind the new colors. But it look out of place with all the other colors on the page.

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  5. This was rolled out a while ago. I've had it for a few months on my main account, although it doesn't show up in every browser I use. Even Chrome on different computers doesn't always show it.

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  6. Yuriy, how did you work that out?

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  7. it better not be... its hideous.

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  8. Cougar,
    most of recent posts here has a negative component compare to previous.

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  9. "Hopefully, this is just a bug and not a redesigned navigation bar" - this is happening again and again, recently.

    Maybe not a big deal, but I notice the difference

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  10. Thanks for the explanation, Yuriy, I can see where you're coming from.

    I believe Alex likes to say what's on his mind, whether his views are in praise of Google or otherwise.

    Based on what I've seen from Alex, over the past few years, I'm familiar with his tone in this post and other recent editions.

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  11. I am following the blog over past few years two. Also likes that it represents author's personal opinion. But I see the tone is changed.

    I can believe that it is really his opinion if he has small negative opinions from time to time. But I started to notice such things in almost every post. It is or not his opinion or he is depressed recent time

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  12. Whats the point to post this: "7 Google Features Only Available in Google Chrome"?

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  13. No, Yuriy, I'm not paid by Facebook. I just try to be honest. Just because Google added a feature, it doesn't mean that it's flawless and you can't criticize it. Honest feedback helps Google improve.

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  14. Agree, it is often appropriate to criticize Google. Hopefully, this is not the main goal of every new post

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  15. I wrote that post because I've noticed that there are many features in Gmail and Google Docs that only work in Chrome. One can argue that Google adds features that only work in its browser, but my opinion was that Chrome evolves faster and the other browsers will catch up in the near future.

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  16. Absolutely, it because Chrome evolves faster. Just this was not clear in that post.

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  17. You should read the first paragraph.

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  18. My brain perceiving the paragraph ironically (in context of the title). I read it as you trying to speak ironically.

    If you really mean that Chrome is cool, not google building feature for chrome first, than ok. At least it dual meaning.

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  19. I think it looks good. The navbar color should be a customizable feature.

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  20. Actually this has been going on for a while, you may have just noticed but I made some people new Gmail accounts (2 people) and in Gmail only they both have the black navigation bar, but this one is more transparent and has white text. This seems to be an experimental feature for a theme maybe.

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  21. I'm going to have to disagree and say that i like the black bar and wish we had the option to turn it black on all Google pages.

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  22. The Music Beta navbar also looks different. It's a sort of grey with grey diagonal stripes. Is it possible that different services will get different colors, as a sort of color-coding identification? I know they've just finally united all the logo styles with the Google + lower case blue text, but I could imagine each product (or group of products, ie Apps vs Search vs Social) having the lower case text in a different Google color to match the navbars.

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  23. It's not a bug.
    See the different gear's color?

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  24. It is not a bug
    in gmail, if I choose a dark theme, the navigation bar turn black style, if I turn a light color theme, the navigation bar turn to the original one

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  25. It's fixed for me already :-)

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  26. Make it go away!!

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  27. This is awful! Is there no way for me to get rid of the annoying black navbar?

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  28. The black menu bar is only appearing in Firefox for me, Chrome and IE are normal.

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  29. I have the black bar with IE but Chrome does not. I think this is Google's way of to make the page annoying if you use other than Chrome.

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  30. can i change the color of iT?

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  31. "I have the black bar with IE but Chrome does not. I think this is Google's way of to make the page annoying if you use other than Chrome."
    I agree "don't be evil" smashed again

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  32. I now have the black bar after upgrading my Google Profile, but only via Chrome. The inconsistency between which apps show it is irritating. I assume if you delete your Google Profile, it goes back to normal.

    When will users have control over which apps get placed in the toolbar and what colors to select?

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  33. I use Opera. For some reason I suddenly got a message saying something had corrupted my default search engine, and that it was changing it back to bing. Internet Explorer was opened and there was a message about whether I wanted to update Microsoft Silverlight. I closed all that and that's when the black bar at the top of Google's standard search page appeared.

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  34. Well i guess its a bug i don't see that on my toolbar

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  35. On my ipad 2, it has a black nav bar, but not on my iPod touch... Weird. Do you think that this is a feedback experiment or a bug or a new look?

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  36. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolving-google-design-and-experience.html

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  37. hey im 17 and i jus got this acursed black bar on the google navigation part of the page. is there any darn way to get this crap off, because clearly i hate the heck out of it!!!if you know a way please contact me a bis4bri.mack@yahoo.com, thank you!!!

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  38. nevermind i got it off!!!!!!!!!!! thank you lord!!!!!! i found out that the key is to sign in to your profile hit the refresh button and then log back out. doing this caused my nav. bar to turn white again!!!!!!! so please disregard my email and my first post!! thank you for your help.
    yours truly, the 17 year old lol

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  39. It's asinine. Where the h@ll is the option. Where is the color choice. What a freaking arrogant, inbred company and careless mentality. Annoy everyone month to month that's google creed.

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  40. I hate this... it makes the header way too prominent. Draws away from the search results.
    POLL: Is Google's new search navigation an epic fail?
    Vote: http://www.wepolls.com/r/1007025

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  41. I have 4 browsers on my computer:

    Chrome 12 stable
    Opera 11.11
    Firefox 5
    IE 9

    As of today, ALL browsers show the dark color navigation bar on the Google search main page.

    It is hideous, disgusting, and smacks of arrogance. It's just like how Google Instant is shoved down our throats as the default setting. Newsflash: Google Instant is highly annoying, near to _worthless_ for oriental languages such as Chinese, Japanese etc., and I do not want a search engine to second guess my search.

    When you're number 1 with no real competition for a long time, you will become complacent and arrogant. I think this is part of human nature.

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  42. I am dyslexic and the black bar on top makes it hard to use the google search. Google became the biggest company by the fact it kept it's home page simple white. Please don't ruin a good thing.

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  43. Everybody uses Google because of the clearness, restfull white design.
    Stop the colors pls!

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  44. The toolbar may have its use, but many would really enjoy another colour but black, like a dark blue or smth.

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  45. Light text on dark background = signs of incompetent designers.

    Dark text on dark background = signs of brain-damaged designers.

    I guess the low-contrast-zombies at Google have finally tracked down the last humans and killed them.

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  46. I'm voting with my feet. Until Google remove the hideous black nav bar, all my browsers now have a YAHOO! home page, it's refreshingly minimal and gives surprisingly fine search results!

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  47. For Firefox Users:

    I made a userstyle to revert to the real classic navigation bar.
    Install the plugin "Stylish" to use it.

    http://userstyles.org/styles/50028/google-classic-navigation-bar-international

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  48. Does google just want us all to try another search engine a little bit? Where is the spirit of simpler and better which thrived google for so many years? Maybe money changes everything including google and it just wants to force us to notice his navigation bar when we only want to do some simple internet searching.

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  49. Sheesh. Google is sounding more like Microsoft every day. What happened to the days when you weren't owned on the internet by one service or another? If the big G gets too out of line, I'm going to Bing it for a while. I miss Altavista sometimes.

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  50. I want the black bar so that I can select photos from my albums easily and I can't find it so can't get to photos....how do I get the menu bar back....ahhhhh this is so f-ing annoying, shouldn't be this hard, I am actuallyt trying to help someone else who is frustrated and I can usually figure it out but i cannot....HELP

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