So I came across Michael Fleischner’s rant on the new feature added to google search.
He complains about the new google preview feature, which gives you a brief snapshot preview of a website before actually clicking and entering it.
He argues that it is a pointless new addition and that it only encourages people to be lazy, ie the website is only a click away. I however would like to respectfully disagree with Mr. Fleischner. Sometimes, search engine users can be quite paranoid of the websites the enter. A quick snapshot of the website before entering in gives the “putting your toe into the water” option, it allows people to feel safer when browsing the internet. Also, it helps users to ignore and skip through websites that look sketchy and not legitimate. When I do my research, one thing I absolutely hate is bumping into websites that aren’t good enough sources for my work. One way to tell about a website’s legitimacy is it’s layout.
To my knowledge, Yahoo, MSN search, and other search engines do not give you this option. And I think google’s decision to improve its search engine this way only reinforces the fact that it is truly the king of the market, to consumers.