Google announced a new design for Google+ today, saying it wanted to make the social network "more functional and flexible" with a design that is easier to use, nicer to look at and that "grows alongside our aspirations." The changes come less than a week after Google co-founder Larry Page, celebrating his one-year anniversary as CEO, talked up his efforts to do a "big clean up" at the company.
Image via CrunchBase
The new design replaces the static icons at the top with a navigation ribbon that aims to give users more control over Google+ (or Google Plus, if you prefer) apps such as Hangouts, Photos, your Profile page, etc., allowing you to drag apps up and down to reorder them, as well as hover over apps to see additional options. Hangouts, its live video chat service, has been given its own page, with new feature that let users see an updated list of invitations from people in your Google+ "circles" of connections and a guide to all public hangouts. There's also a new Explore page that shows what's trending across the network.
"It's still early days, and there’s plenty left to do," Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, said on Google's official blog today. We’ve "built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned.”
Google notes that "more than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+." But it's been pointed out that this is not exactly a sign of widespread adoption for the service, which went live in June. That number includes users of Google's other services — YouTube, Gmail, Google search, Android Market — who may be sharing on the site but may have not made it a "destination" like Facebook and Twitter.
The change comes less than a week after Page posted a long public letter, talking about the opportunities and challenges that face the company and the role Google+ plays in "creating a social layer across all our products so users connect with the people who matter to them."
Sidestepping concerns about Google's new privacy policy — which allows it to collect and share information about users across its services — Page instead touted Google+'s ability to "understand people and their connections."
"The recent changes we made to our privacy policies generated a lot of interest. But they will enable us to create a much better, more intuitive experience across Google—our key focus for the year."
Today's redesign echoes Page's comments that he has been overseeing a "big clean up" of the company, which includes reorganizing the management team around its seven core product areas — search, ads, Android, social, YouTube, Chrome and commerce/local, — and rethinking its strategy on acquisitions from companies that are "interesting" to "strategically important." Page also shut down more than 30 projects and said many of Google's services, including search, have been given a "visual refresh" to give them a "cleaner, more consistent" look.
"Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want," Page said. "I’ve pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world. Google is a large company now, but we will achieve more, and do it faster, if we approach life with the passion and soul of a start-up."
