<rant>I love Google but I'm absolutely sick and tired of the same crappy Google interface!!!</rant>
Now that this is out of my system...
My husband commented that I have a very "Google browser". I generally have Gmail open, took the plunge to using Google Reader (which I hadn't blogged about yet, but I should've switched sooner), and now that Google gobbled up Writely, it seems that I cannot escape that same boring web interface in those same boring colors. Oh yeah, and I'm also using Google Calendar. In order to manage all of my "Googliness" I have decided to condense all of that down to one "Google Personalized Homepage". If I could integrate my Google Calendar correctly into Netvibes I would totally do it because usually I have both open which seems a bit pointless given they both serve the same purpose.
So Google, if you're listening, could you maybe start offering your users some templates? I don't know how much longer I can put up the same interface for every single web page I visit. I'm bored and uninspired.
Tags: google, writely, google docs, google calendar, gmail
You are totally dead on with this - Google needs skins/templates in a big, big way.
I know that Google has a vision (and a brand), but it would also be nice if they allowed tweaks and plug-ins to allow their huge (and technically savvy) user base to make things better. For example, I used to use a webmail client that allowed color-coding messages using hex colors based upon who they were from, to, subject and other parameters. As my "inbox" typically contains hundreds of messages that require some form or another of action, it was a great way to visually see where things were.
I'm sure now with two people suggesting this, Google will get right on that. ;)
I can't imagine that Google hasn't heard this from other people. What I think is that they're too busy buying up tech companies and innovating to really think about creative design.
I'm certainly not a Google hater, they have the money and the brain power to put out some truly great products, I just think they need to hire a few designers and artsy creative types too :)
Just saw this for Google Reader:
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2006/11/tools-to-improve-your-reader.html
That jogged me to go look at Lifehacker's posts about Google:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/google/
Wherein after way too much clicking around I found this big list of Google Greasemonkey scripts.
http://userscripts.org/tag/google
While Greasemonkey certainly isn't the end-all solution, things like the GMail CSS Skin might be of some use.
I saw that recent lifehacker post about Google Reader too. I have a few greasemonkey scripts for my Gmail which I love, but you're right, I would love to see skins for Google. I would think that all Google would have to do is put in a mechanism for easily changing the CSS file and then Google users would take care of the rest.