Google Is Giving It's Product Websites A Material Makeover

Material design was introduced by Google back in the summer of 2014. Even though the idea of material design was originally conceived keeping Android in mind, material design was later on extended to web development and web designing as well.

After experimenting with the material design (MD) layout in the form of card style search results, Google has been focusing on extending the material design to it's product websites as well, with Blogger being the most recent Google product to get a touch of the coveted material design.

Google had recently given the AdSense and Analytics website a MD overhaul. The above screenshot shows how the new AdSense dashboard looks on a desktop computer after the update. The image below shows the same for Google Analytics. One of the most important MD guidelines which had been laid down by Google include that a material designed website should be responsive across all the screen sizes, that is, no matter on which device (laptop, tablet, smartphone) you are browsing the website, the website should adapt to the screen size of the device automatically and it should look as polished and clean on any screen size as it looks on a desktop computer. However, when we tested the AdSense and Analytics website across smartphones of various sizes, we found the website design to be highly unpleasing and unresponsive. Various elements across the webpages were overlapping with each other and this made reading the contents of the webpage a tough job for us. We were highly disappointed by this.

Even though Google Contacts and Google+ still remain the most impressive looking sites in terms of material design, Google is yet to materialise it's other product websites such as the Google Calendar, Google Groups & Google Scholar. There is certainly no doubt that a material designed website looks much more interactive, vibrant and user friendly than any other website of the same cadre, thus a material designed website is bound to attract more visitors than it's counterparts. We certainly do hope that Google keeps this in mind and extends the material layout to it's remaining product websites as soon as possible, after all, it's been more than two years since material design's inception. Better late than never Google!

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.