The Google redesign seems to be about creating a walled garden, tied together by Google Plus, Android, and aggressive highlighting of other Google services on each page.
Maybe they fear that if they don't trap the users, Facebook will. Either way, the continued high user figures at Yahoo show that it's possible. To do it, they need to stop being a search engine (to discover others content, leave the garden), and become a portal, the only web experience you'll ever need.
I think this becomes necessary because on a tablet, people use apps, and if those aps are deep enough, they may never escape them. You could make a tablet that just ran the facebook ap, an a subset of users would be happy. They need a counter trap.
To me, to them, any other GUI changes that crept in are likely incidental. Does it tie in with Google Plus? Will it work on a tablet?, Does it look like our tablet ap?, would be the primary question.
But that would lead to making their products easier to use, not harder. I'm not sure this theory is good for explaining much (besides Google being run by evil illuminati henchmen or whatever).
Maybe they fear that if they don't trap the users, Facebook will. Either way, the continued high user figures at Yahoo show that it's possible. To do it, they need to stop being a search engine (to discover others content, leave the garden), and become a portal, the only web experience you'll ever need.
I think this becomes necessary because on a tablet, people use apps, and if those aps are deep enough, they may never escape them. You could make a tablet that just ran the facebook ap, an a subset of users would be happy. They need a counter trap.
To me, to them, any other GUI changes that crept in are likely incidental. Does it tie in with Google Plus? Will it work on a tablet?, Does it look like our tablet ap?, would be the primary question.