What the... new google toolbar

rhody

Self explanatory... is it just me, or is everybody in the collective world seeing this ?

ahhh... method, sort of, to their madness...
Rhody...

P.S. I don't know about you, but I pefer the original coke, not the hybrid one Google is trying to pass on us...

gb7nash

I noticed this too. That black bar is bugging the heck out of me.

rhody

Then unleash the hounds and let google have it, they claim to be able to handle in the millions of hits per minute. If someone has 2011 stats, please post, I couldn't easily find it. I wonder what would happen if that number became 10 times that in the same time period. Maybe they are inviting an denial of service attack, then to localize and track cyber hackers, if that is their strategy, then I say let them have their fun, we are just along for the ride.

Rhody...

Evo

Looks like they got hacked, because certainly they wouldn't do that on purpose...

rhody

Not according to the article Evo, unless someone is trying to mess with them. The link I provided clearly states they were experimenting with black because it saves tons of money displaying black pixels versus white. You may be right of course, they may not be doing this now to test. I am sure we will hear a ton of opinions on the blogs and news tomorrow, then have to sift fact from fiction. Sigh, what a PITA.

Rhody...

Evo

I was joking.

lisab

Message to Google:

STOP!!!! Stop messing with stuff that ain't broken!!!! You're making us crazy out here!!!

/rant

rhody

OK, Greg, I am sure the professionals you entrust keep our site safe can pull a few shenanigans themselves. Let them loose on Google, if only for a few hours to send a message...

Rhody...

fluidistic

I use a led lcd monitor. I've read that there's no increase of consumption of energy for any color so this is worthless in my case. By the way, I don't have a high brightness but the bar isn't black (AT ALL) to me. It's a dark gray. Not even close to the darker I've seen.
However when I open a terminal (in linux), it is black. The darker my screen can "produce" (not as black as when I turn off my screen though, despite all the ads that led screen have the best contrast, etc.).

Oh and I'd love a totally black google :D I wish we could set this in some options... Any color we want. That would be awesome and I might stick with black.
Edit: By the way the dark gray new bar is broken. Enter gmail and... oh it's white again.

KrisOhn

Yea, that only applies for people who still use CRT monitors. With monitors that have a backlight it doesn't make a difference since the backlight is on no matter what.

Evo

Who plans to leave facebook for the new google+ social site?

I don't like social sites.

ideasrule

I think LCD pixels are naturally transparent, and need a voltage to polarize the light so that it can't pass through. So black pixels should take more electricity, not less, to draw.

KrisOhn

Yes, that is correct. I think we had a miscommunication (my bad) I meant to say, the only people who experience a power consumption drop with black images vs white images, are those with CRT monitors.

NeoDevin

I'll test it out for sure, but whether I switch completely depends on how many other people start using it. The promo videos they put out look much better than facebook. Looks like they are actually trying to let users have control of who sees their information, which is a big improvement already over facebook, where they bury the settings and hope nobody finds them.

jhae2.718

They changed Google! Nooooo!

Greg Bernhardt

I don't see what the big deal is. It makes it easier to access all of google's apps.

Ryan_m_b

Personally I started to hate the changes google were making when they added that annoying select feature (you know the one, you try to use the arrow keys to scroll down the page and instead a little arrow flicks between options?).

The saving energy thing is nothing new, at school (an unthinkable 6 years ago now) we were encouraged to use blackle over google to save the planet and such.