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Another article about Douglas Bowman, who left his job as a visual designer at Google in March to become the creative director of Twitter. Bowman's move became a business/design/tech story after he wrote a post on his blog about his frustrations with the design process at Google, which you can read here (http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html).
In brief, Google constantly tests and retests alternative designs, gauging users' responses (or lack thereof) before moving forward. And we're not talking major design changes here, but minutia like stroke width and shades of blue.
As Bowman admits, it's not like Google is suffering for its design OCD. But I guess I'm guilty of judging a website by its proverbial cover; I always assumed from Google's habit of coordinating its front-page logo to holidays and current events that the company fostered a quirky design atmosphere. I never took into account the reliable (i.e. boring yet comforting) consistency of the remaining 99.9% of the site.
Note to self: The medium might change, but the old clichés remain the same.