[jacquesm]

That's very well possible. But in my experience, running a roughly million-member website for over 12 years any change we ever made led to the exact same pattern:

  - initial bitching

  - gradual acceptance

  - the new is much better than the old

This usually over a period of 3 months or so. And that's for improvements and mistakes alike. There seems to be an automatic component to all this that is 'conservative', as in 'opposed to any change'.

Time will tell on this one, if google reverts to the old lay-out then the conclusion is that they also thought that it was better before. But it is very well possible that this 'worse' lay-out is actually better for google, even if it is worse for the users, for instance because it increases their bottom line.

A design error is not always a business error.

[staunch]

MySpace's lack of AJAX-based functionality resulted in a massive number of "extra" page views, which meant significantly higher ad revenue. Better for their revenue, worse for users. That was not a good business decision.

[nzmsv]

I think it's like the MS Office redesign. The new UI is supposedly better, especially for newbies. But the amount of bitching among experienced Office users was remarkable.

[netcan]

That may be true. If so, it makes recognising errors in design more difficult. It doesn't mean they aren't possible.