Google Testing Material Design Overhaul for Mobile Web Search: Report

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 27 October 2014 19:10 IST

Google is reportedly testing a Material Design overhaul for mobile Web search, and the refreshed design has rolled out to some Android users.

According to Android Police, an account of Amazon's Mechanical Turk large-scale testing system is displaying a Material Design version of Google Search on mobile devices. Participants of the Project Endor testing group are asked to visit a mockup of the Google Search page that includes "few canned searches and a ton of new user interface elements and animations" similar to Google's Material Design UI seen on recently overhauled apps.

The report includes that the Material Design mobile Web search mockup is almost entirely non-functional and is more of an interactive animation. Even the search bar doesn't activate the keyboard for typing, it notes. The link is said to be compatible with Nexus 5 and Samsung Galaxy S5 devices, but may require Mechanical Turk access.

The team at Android Police has also published a video of the overhauled mobile Web search page mockup. The team notes the overhauled interface has rolled out to some users.

As yet it's not clear that what all visual changes will make to the actual Google Search app's Material Design update, but we could expect some of these elements at least.

Earlier this month, the search giant had started rolling out the final version of Google Play Store 5.0 app with the Material Design update to Android users.

The most notable change is the more vivid palette of colours, and a flatter look that's more characteristic of the Material Design philosophy. It features reworked top bars that merge the section name (for example - Movies, Games and others) with the category tabs like Top Releases, New Releases, Home and others. All the Google Play sections namely Apps, Games, Movies, Books, and Newsstand are also seen with the new colour palette combinations that are brighter and more vivid than the current version.

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