Since its inception, Google has had a reputation for bare, minimalist but supremely useful user interfaces (born, by the most delicious of irony, from the self-confessed fact that neither Sergei nor Larry knew HTML when they coded up the engine). And, although the word-count of the home page has grown over the years, and although things like Picasa Web and Blogger have been positively florid in comparison, this has remained - it's not generally, although on occasion true, too difficult to work out what your options are and how to get there.
But go and have a look at Google Analytics, at www.google.com/analytics.
It kind of looks like a Google product, but on the other hand it also kind of looks like a hard sell to industry, and the nice and above all familiar box saying "sign in" is replaced by a button which reads "Access Analytics". Excuse me? Access? Isn't this corporate-speak for "I'm a wanker who uses long words when a diminutive one would do"?
It took me a few seconds to work out how to continue, and it left me with an oddly dirty feeling to be using it at all.
Me don't like, and me faintly worried by what they've done.
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