The Google+ Project

Customize your google experience with this user style. Make Google+ look like Facebook.

The resemblance between the two social networks is uncanny — my Tweet-length opinion is that Google+ is like Facebook with a more usable, streamlined Photos and Groups interface (and that might be enough to win). Only time will tell.

In the meantime, for those of you who have the decidedly middle class problem of social network fatigue, there is a solution. Thanks to the unlimited creativity of humans, you can now actually make your Google+ look like Facebook, with the Google+ : Facebook Stylish extension or this CSS code.

The story behind naming and logo of the Google Project, "Emerald Sea".

Vic Gundotra: "We needed a code name that captured the fact that either there was great opportunity to sail to new horizons and new things, or that we were going to drown by this wave."

Bradley Horowitz, who was tapped as the effort’s product lead, then went online to look for images to represent "emerald sea," and the very first one that came up, Gundotra says, was the painting above, by German-American painter Albert Bierstadt.
The team decided to make that their logo.

Ex-Google UX guy Paul Adams is perhaps most known for his slideshow “The Real Life Social Network,” which highlighted the perils of having one default group for sharing and emphasized that the ideal social networking service would be designed for multiple groups. The slideshow illustrated the flaws in Facebook’s lump sum friend model and called for a social network where users could set sharing levels to correspond to the 4-6 separate relationship groups that people tend to have.

Sound familiar? Well, if this reminds you a little of Google+ Social Circles, its because Adams was a User Experience Researcher on Google social/Google+ until he left Google in December 2010. The first version of his famous “The Real Life Social Network” deck was published in April 2010, at least two months before the project started (with an even earlier version published two years ago).

A core feature of the new Google+ service is Circles, which makes it drag-and-drop easy to build 'circles' of friends in the browser. Meet Andy Hertzfeld, the man behind Circles--and the original Mac.

One thing I just want to make clear is, I feel a little bad that I've actually gotten too much credit as the designer of Google+...I feel more comfortable saying I'm the designer of the Circle Editor, which...even though I had help from other people, I really was the driving force behind that. I was not, really, for the entire Google+, and I'd just like to make sure that the superb UI team that we have here does get credit for their work.

Google is not known for great design. That’s not to say that minimalist design cannot be great design.

But Google+ and all that falls under its umbrella looks good — really good. The trademark minimalism is still present, but it’s been done with style (is that contradictory?) and is something to be appreciated.

That’s because interface designer Andy Hertzfeld, member of the original Apple Macintosh team, was given free reign over design decision

Google's new Google+ social networking project departs from the company's usually spartan interfaces with an animated UI designed by original Apple Macintosh team member Andy Hertzfeld.

The new Google+ interface, especially the Circles social grouping feature, contains animations and other choices reminiscent of Apple's design ideals.

"With colorful animations, drag-and-drop magic and whimsical interface touches, Circles looks more like a classic Apple program than the typically bland Google app," said Levy, author of the book "In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works And Shapes Our Lives."