Google denies claims of a desktop Google.com revamp

Enlarge / Yahoogle.

Google's homepage has been a stark white page for basically ever, with little more than a search box and a few buttons to get users to a search results page as fast as possible. Yesterday, a report from The Guardian claimed this would be changing, and Google would be adding a "news feed" to "Google.com." The Google app on mobile devices has long had a news feed—originally introduced as "Google Now"—and the report claims a similar interface is coming to the desktop.

The crux of The Guardian's report says "The feed of personalised information, which has been a mainstay of Google’s mobile apps for Android and iOS since 2012... will become part of the main desktop experience in the near future, the Guardian understands." But there are a few aspects of the report that make me question its authenticity.

First, the report pulls quotes and images from Google's July 19 blog post about news feed upgrades, but Google's post was only speaking about the mobile site and apps, and The Guardian's report doesn't make that clear. Second, the report contains an error in the title and lede: "Google to radically change homepage for first time since 1996," the report reads. "Google’s famously simple homepage with its logo and single search box on a white background is set to undergo a radical change for the first time since its launch in 1996, with the addition of Google’s interest and news-based feed."