A to z of Google Information Architecture

Here are 26 different sets of menu items for different Google Services. There must be one Information Architect at Google who has got the determination to bring some consistency to this hodge-podge of menu items.

There is an attempt at being consistent in the menu designs, but someone needs to sit down a write a style guide. The Googlers can't even agree on whether they should be using "Sign Out" or "Sign out". The font sizes are almost the same. Apart from Analytics they all agree on the text colour. The only people using FAQ instead of Help are Alerts. AdSense use Log Out instead of Sign Out, and they put it before the Help item instead of after it.

The A to Z of Google Menu Options
	AdSense
	AdWords
	Alerts
	Analytics
	Base
	Books
	Calendar
	Co-op
	Docs
	Finance
	Froogle
	Google
	Groups
	History
	Mail
	Maps
	My Account
	News
	Notebook
	Page Creator
	Patents
	Personalised
	Photos
	Reader
	Video
	Webmaster Tools

And you may have noticed the new blue menu list that has started to appear in the left hand side of some Google pages.

	Mail
	Calendar
	Docs

They haven't even got the same entries. It is Mail or Gmail? Should it be more or all my services?

Is it so disorganised inside Google that they can't even get these basic items right?

Comments

[Pascal Magnenat]

consistensy is not necessarily always a mean to achieve usability!

[John]

@andreas

Its segue. Not Segway™.

You can easily spot the difference. One makes you look like you have more money than sense, the other makes you look like a pretentious idiot.

I agree on the google menus. Also I am as yet unable to share documents outside my domain in google apps, yet am able to do some from my own personal account.

Still. I <3 google.

[somebody]

it's not a big deal. the menus are context-specific. context is something that many IAs can't get their heads around just yet. you know, different apps, different needs, different people, different ways of thinking about things...

[andreas]

yep. that is abysmal. How many hours have i spent looking for "all my services" or something. Try to get to your adwords from your mail or vice versa. Looks pretty much uncoordinated. It reminds me of
Content is King - in the meaning if you have superior content, people will use it even without much comfort from usability......

[Frank Spillers]

Interesting... this is a good segway to my latest post "Is Google's business model progressive disclosure?" sort of similar issues...

http://tinyurl.com/2hdco4

[Rajarajan]

Good analysis. But i think these are minor but still inconsistent.

They also have a More>> link when clicked shows a page with all its service offerings and the link More>> still remains (though the link is removed).

[Claus]

All of the items you point to are low frequency use items - and in fact it's abundantly clear what each text means. I'll buy the pure language problems: mail vs. gmail and possibly sign out/log out - though.

Going the way of Microsoft would mean actually slowing down everybody to "fix" these "problems". For a good description of how useful a "quality process" for this would be - have a look at this Windows design war story: http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

[raimondo]

great analisys... I think that various staffs are no-time-synchronized

[Emil Stenström]

Impressive work capturing all those images! That just must be a mistake on their part, too few people know usability enough :)

[Veky]

I really don't see why it _should_ be the same. Various products have various audiences, and serve various needs.

[Rob Mason]

They're going the way of Microsoft!