For many years, I have made Google.com as my homepage on every browser I use, may it be Firefox, Chrome, Opera and yes, even on my old, outdated IE. This is for the fact that Google has this reputation of cleanliness and fast loading experience. Its uncluttered appearance simply is my kind of website.
But recently, an update on the Google homepage forced me to replace it with Bing.com. The update I'm talking about is the changes made on the buttons of the homepage which are not instantly displayed until you hover your mouse to them.
I don't know the rationale of this idea, maybe to look the homepage cleaner and let the world know Google can do that, you know, those simple kind of code tricks. Whatever Google's reasons are, I basically don't like it. It's not like my opinion matters to them, but personally, I don't like it.
The new hover-fade in effect of the homepage gives the perception of lag, a slow connection specially to those who were not aware of the hovering effect. The new homepage looked like it hanged while loading the simple links of the old Google homepage.
This is actually the second time I changed my homepage. First was when Google redirects me to my iGoogle homepage instead of their plain search page. It was the time when you visit your iGoogle page and leave, your next Google homepage visit will be redirected to the iGoogle page. I then learned that in order to stop the redirection, you have to choose the Classic Homepage option on the iGoogle nav.
After that first incident, and having resolved it, I went back using Google as my homepage. I just don't know if I'll decide to get back to Google's arms again now that I'm enjoying the beauty of Bing.com as a homepage. The lovely background pictures on the search page really makes me smile. It worked in its purpose.
