I don’t think, people just type in their search without moving the cursor. Especially non-geeks do their surfing simple, in this case, move the cursor to google’s text-field – regardless, it already is placed there…

1st – You seem to keep forgetting that Google is an international company and that there’s a lot of people that don’t speak English, but still use OS and browsers in English, nor do they get browser interface usage, thus they don’t use built in search form.

2nd – average computer user today, doesn’t have the IT skills or knowledge and his/her computer is infested with all kinds of trojans, malware etc. which means his/her default search engine in browser is probable hijacked.

3rd – Theres an enormous number of people who keep google.com as they’re homepage and perceive that google.com IS the internet, they don’t even use browser address bar, but instead type the whole URL in google search and then just click on the first result.

4th – don’t you think that with all the cookies we get on our systems by Google and all the date Google collects on us (they’re users), they have pretty good idea on how average internet user works. Meaning they didn’t do this just ‘coz they think its cool, they did this based on extensive research, hard evidence and collected data.

There are many more aspects on why Google knows what they’re doing but it would be to long to type it here.

I base my opinion on working with average computer users on everyday basis.

http://www.boagworld.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5119

there seem to be 2 camps here: those who actually use the site and hate it and those who theorize about how brilliant it is without any supporting evidence.

the only reason i ever go to google is to check check email and google analytics. I do all searches through the firefox search box. so this is nothing but an annoyance to me.

Google should be smart enough to know customization is the way to go. let me turn the damn thing off at least.

That leads to the google.com homepage having the primary function of being a starting point of habit for anyone using google services like gmail or google apps. At the very least they should offer a cookie.

It’s “eye candy” that a) isn’t pretty, b) doesn’t improve the design of their site, and c) is counter-intuitive.

Once again Google fail at usability.

The focus is naturally on the search box and I typically start typing as soon as I’ve hit the page, then just hit “Enter”. It’s a great user experience to be able to do that, given I’m a keyboard warrior!

Marko

This isn’t about focusing your users attention on what YOU want them to do. It’s about focusing their attention on what THEY want to do.

There are basically two distinct use cases for this page – do a search, or do… something else (go to Mail, view Search History, etc)

If your task is to search, then you only need to use the keyboard; Google have thoughtfully placed cursor focus inside the search bar, so as soon as the page loads type your search query and hit enter. You don’t need to see any of those menus and links so they won’t appear at any point of this.

If you intended to do something else however, like going to Google Mail, then you’ve probably already got your hand on the mouse ready to find that link, and look what you’ve just done – you’ve activated the hidden menus and here’s that link you were after.

It’s more than just promoting your primary call to action, it’s about improving your user experience.

Pete

I am not arguing against the fading effect on grounds of it being a serious detriment to usability, but rather as an unnecessary addition which serves more to distract and delay than anything else.