OK, so I just got word of this new Labs offering, and it looks neat, and yes, I do like the Mac OSX references in the blog posting, and as a Mac guy it’s nice to see some props thrown our way. Turning the tabs above the search box into an icon-driven menu bar is a cool idea. And it lets Google cram 11 items up there, as opposed to the six they now have as text.
But let me be very clear about this: The “aw shucks gee golly this was just something I tossed together and it seemed really cool and gee the nice managers at Google let me put it up” schtick is wearing, well, really, really thin. Even if it’s true that most new ideas do bubble up from engineers in their spare time (and far as I know, they do), it’s just …. I dunno, a schtick. Nothing gets up to Labs or the main page without some serious strategic thinking – or at least, it shouldn’t. And does every engineer that hacks something together have the same affection for the words “cool” and “amazing”?
That said, it’s a neat UI hack, and it addresses, at least in some small way, the tabs issue that Danny writes of so well.
UPDATE: Google has taken the site down. And my contats at Google have only this to say “We are not providing comment.” Hmmmmm…may be that Apple did not like the compliment….