Google Has 'Supersized' Its Search Box

Google announced it has increased the size of the search box that appears on its home and results pages, giving users more space to enter their queries.

“Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we're excited about it,” said Google VP Marissa Mayer in a blog post announcing the change. The company said the change “s-u-p-e-r-sizes” the search box, but users can be the judge.

“It symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use. The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements.”

The changes are subtle enough that you might not notice except for the before-and-after graphic Google has thoughtfully provided. (Meanwhile, Google is working on more noticable changes to the search results themselves).

Mayer wrote that over the company's 11 years there have been a number of changes to the Google home page. They can be viewed here, but before clicking, try to remember a time when the Google home page didn't look pretty much like it does today.

For one, the exclamation point in Google! is gone, as is a front-page link to jobs@Google, though the overall look is pretty much the same through the years, losing clutter as time goes by.

Is it an optical illusion or has the search box grown and shrunk over the years? It looks like the new “s-u-p-e-r-sized” search box, as Google calls it, is the same size the box was a number of years ago. At least to my eyes