Why One Click Has Turned Google’s News Strategy On Its Head

[Commentary] It’s the little things that catch your eye sometimes. To your average reader the almost microscopic adjustment to Google’s interface would barely register. It is literally a matter of an extra click. Where once you could move straight from the web search into a news search simply by selecting the different search function in the top bar, you now need to open the news channel and retype your search term. Well, you might argue, what is the harm in adding the extra three seconds it takes the average user to retype “Lady GaGa” and hit enter? My response would be: seconds matter. For a company that heralded the arrival of instant search with the news that they could shave two to five seconds of every search by bridging the gap between reading speed (30 milliseconds between glances at different areas of a page) and typing speed (300 milliseconds between keystrokes), this is a step backwards. Or at least a step forwards at a fractionally slower pace than usual.