RedesignGoogle Offers You a Chance to Give the Search Engine Giant a Makeover

The design aesthetics of Google have been a heated topic for a while now. The minimalist design takes the whole whitespace argument a little too far in most people’s minds, and if you’re one of them you can now make your indignation known by entering a contest looking for the best Google redesign.

The contest is called RedesignGoogle (big surprise), and is being led by WebMynd, a startup sponsored by Y Combinator in early 2008. That means that this is not a Google-organized contest and Google may not take any notice of what you do to make it look better. Then again, they might.

But probably not.

Still this is a nice chance to show off your design sense and show everyone what Google would look like if they actually cared about design aesthetics. And WebMynd does have the lofty goal of getting Google’s attention and spurring them to redesign themselves a little. Maybe Google will actually take the hint.

Again, probably not.

WebMynd makes a browser plugin that allows you to personalize your browsing and searching. There is a search sidebar that appears on the right side of the Google search results page, which can be configured to provide more accurate results for particular users. The WebMynd plugin also makes your browsing history easier to search and provides a Dock that makes it easier to use social media sites and return to tabs and pages that you’ve been to before. Overall, WebMynd just tweaks your browser a little to make it easier to find what you want.

While the program has a significantly different design style than Google, there’s not a lot for the company to gain if Google redesigns itself. That means this is little more than a marketing ploy to draw attention to WebMynd, but it’s a smart one because offering the chance to redesign Google will instantly catch the attention of a lot of design experts out there (and a few nuts who know nothing about design but still get riled up about this kind of stuff; after all, what would the internet be like without the obsessive weirdos?).

The full details for the RedesignGoogle contest are available on the WebMynd blog, but here’s the summary: Designers can make any kind of changes to the search engine’s design they like through CSS modifications. It’s basically a no-holds-barred competition as long as you’re using CSS. You use a stripped-down version of the WebMynd plugin, so you can actually see the results of your changes. WebMynd is already accepting submissions (in case you’ve been saving a Google redesign file for this very moment), and submissions will be accepted through November 1.

Of course, you want to know what’s at stake here. Like I said, don’t count on a nod from Google, but if the panel of judges (mostly the WebMynd team and Paul Graham from Y Combinator) decides your submission is the best, you’ll get a MacBook Air.

Yeah, not the best prize, but you get the satisfaction of know you really showed Google who’s boss. Sorta.

The best part is actually taking a look at the early submissions WebMynd has received so far. Some of them are definitely not an improvement on Google, but are worth a laugh. They’ll work great if you like girls in sweaters, a bunch of individually scrolling boxes or just need anime everywhere you go.

You’ve got to have a better idea than that, right?

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