Google's X Files disappear
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Thursday 17th March 2005 09:42 GMT
Google has unceremoniously, and without comment, yanked its latest
labs "project" after less than twenty four hours. In 'Google X' a
software engineer had replaced the main text navigation bar on the
Google home page with a Mac OS X-style dock. A row of eight icons
zoomed and shrank as the mouse hovered over them, the row itself
shuffling to make room for the expansion - exactly like Mac OS X's
dock.
"Today is an amazing day," burbled software engineer Chikai Ohazama
on the Google weblog. "It's fulfilling to have the opportunity to
reach the audience we always dreamed of when we started Keyhole five
years ago, and that by itself is absolute coolness," he continued.
"I hope all of you enjoy it - especially Mac users, who I'm sure will
appreciate its lineage."
No, really.
In case anyone missed the Mac reference, a sickly reminder above the
Google copyright notice read: "Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X
rocks. Homage to you."
[image]
Unfortunately Apple legal doesn't quite see user interface clones as
an 'homage', but as an excuse to start firing. Google's latest
experiment had disappeared by mid-afternoon, Wednesday. Neither Apple
nor Google offered any comment why the page had been pulled. Ohazama
had described it as "a fun late-night coding jaunt to help me learn
Javascript and DHTML."
Leaving only one very puzzling question unanswered.
Apple's litigious defense of its user interface look and feel - which
goes back almost twenty years to Digital Research's DOS version of
GEM, then its lawsuits against Microsoft and HP over Windows 2.03 and
New Wave, right through to skinning sites who dare even post a
screenshot of anything that looks like Mac OS X Aqua - is very widely
known.
It's known even to remote hill tribes who only have brushing contact
with the West. It's known to people who've awoken from 35 year comas.
It's known to everyone, it seems, except the large company a few
miles to the north in Mountain View. ®
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