And it's down - they didn't announced the product yet.
Pricing:
* Target a representative sample of the U.S. Internet population. $0.10 per response or $150.00 for 1500 responses (recommended for statistical significance).
* Target a subpopulation using inferred demographic data.
$0.50 per response or $750.00 for 1500 responses (recommended for statistical significance).
About:
You create online surveys to gain consumer insight.
Which version of my new logo will people like better? How much are dog owners willing to pay for an organic cotton leash? Is my brand awareness growing over time? We all have nagging questions about our own products, companies, and industries. Now it’s easy get answers and make major decisions with your consumers’ behavior and preferences in mind.
Write your own survey questions or customize existing templates. Target the entire US Internet population or specify a custom audience you’re after, whether it’s 25-34 year olds, coffee drinkers, or pet owners. Pick how many responses you want and your survey is ready to go.
People complete questions in order to access premium content.
People browsing the web come across your questions when they try to access premium content like news articles or videos. Opinions are valuable, so answering the question gives them near instant access to the page they want for free. They don’t have to pull out a wallet or sign in and you gain insight into what people think.
Why one question at a time?
Many researchers are used to doing multi-question surveys in which the same respondent is asked to fill out a 10+ minute questionnaire. With Google Consumer Surveys, you can run multi-question surveys by asking people one question at a time. This results in higher response rates (~40% compared with an industry standard of 0.1 - 2%) and more accurate answers. The system will automatically look for correlations between questions and pull out hypotheses.
Publishers get paid as their visitors answer.
Questions run across sites in our diverse publisher network in order to get the necessary respondents. Publishers—online news sites, video creators, and app developers—make money as site visitors provide answers. Everyone wins.
Google automatically aggregates and analyzes responses, providing the data back to you through a simple online interface. Results appear as they come in, not days or weeks later.
Results & insights
In addition to raw data, charts summarize responses and insights highlight interesting differences. Using the DoubleClick cookie and the respondent’s IP address, Google Consumer Surveys infers demographic and geographic information for each response so you can easily segment by age, gender, location and more. See which results are statistically significant or order additional responses if your initial sample wasn’t sufficient.
Methodology & accuracy
Unlike other online survey platforms which send questionnaires to predetermined “panels,” Google Consumer Surveys takes a new approach to survey sampling, data collection and post-stratification weighting. This produces a close approximation to a random sample of the US Internet population and results that are as accurate as probability based panels.
News is the only property in the list (with Google+) that has a useful homepage and no link back to the homepage from its search result pages (see https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=hello+world), which means it would very frustrating to carry queries for users who click this navigation links to go to Google News homepage. For all other products, either the homepage is useless (Images, Videos) or there's a link to the product homepage at the top of the page (in Maps, you remove results / go to Maps homepage via the maps' top-right menu).
NB: few months ago, results were carried for Docs, Gmail and Calendar. So I assume they measured the % of users who landed on the search results page for each products and directly clicked the Google logo to go the product homepage (as they expected). In the end, Google preferred to satisfy the X million users who didn't expect product A to show results for their previous query to the Y million others who did. Now, would you favor 5 very angry users or 1 million lightly confused users?
With the "Kennedy" UI (codename for the recent cross-product redesign), many Google properties had their own logo replaced by a plain Google one. Now, to differentiate between products such as Google Voice, a red-colored product name is displayed right below the Google logo.
Also, when you do a Google search, the product name is now always "Search", even when you started a search in Google News / Images / Videos / Shopping / Books / Places / Blogs / Discussions / Applications / Recipes or Patentes.
With Kennedy, Google has actually reached its goal of becoming a 'universal search engine' and it can finally show a single interface for (almost) all types of queries (except for Maps, Flights and search for personal/private items like email and documents).
You can still access the specific homepages of Google Images and Google News, but Google is slowly convincing users to initiate all their searches from google.com, without thinking about which engine to use. Thus, every search from news.google.com redirects to classic google.com, with the "news" filter activated.
For personal searches (eg Gmail, Reader, Docs, Voice), Google hasn't completely switched to the "filtered results interface". Most of those apps need their own homepage with a list of items (messages, contacts, documents, voice messages, top stories, feed items). However:
- most of them have switched to the plain Google logo with the red-colored product title. You can stay in the app or refresh the item list by clicking on the product title instead of the Google logo, which would lead you to the unexpected Google homepage;
- most of those homepage (or "item lists") could be merged with Google+ and the new notification bar on google.com, so you could access all your personal things from a classic search. For social results, it's working pretty well since Google Plus Your World: all social items are shown on-top of other results in a classic search. Soon, every new email, documents update or voice message could appear in the notification bar and search results (just like social items): no need to go to mail.google.com, docs.google.com or voice.google.com.
Now (to answer your question), what result do you expect from a click on the Google logo in Gmail? - To go to you inbox? No, that should be the result of a click on the product title, Gmail.
- to go to the Google homepage? No, you're not familiar enough with Kennedy navigation.
So my guess is that Google is trying everything to get you to click on products' title to go to/refresh its homepage. Meanwhile, they prevent you from clicking on the Google logo because you wouldn't understand (yet) why you would be redirected to google.com from Gmail.
If this (presumed) strategy work, you would always go to google.com to interact with any kind of products/items, without having to "navigate". Just search Google or browse your notification stream, whatever the type of content (message, documents, web pages...) and its context (personal, social, public...).
Just looking at Gmail now, there actually isn't a Gmail logo anymore. There is a Google logo that I can't click on and there's a Gmail link underneath it, but clicking the Gmail link opens a popup menu. I have to then click "Gmail" on the popup menu to get to my Inbox. (Or I could just click "Inbox" of course, but that sometimes gets hidden when i have a lot of labels open, and it's a smaller, fiddly link). I'd bet more people will have noticed this change in behavior than those who've noticed the change from a Gmail logo to a Google logo.
My point is, all this requires me to think. But before I could just swing my mouse into the top left corner, click "Gmail" and always end up at my inbox, no matter where I was in the application. This consistency has gone.
I should have phrased my question: "What possible advantage does this offer, to the user?"
Ah, I knew someone would mention the total inconsistency of Gmail's title. I also think it's detrimental to the vast majority of its users.
For most other products, Google prefers to frustrate some users (cf. https://plus.google.com/117598418867899518106/posts/Zr4vhv6p...) by disabling all logos' links while users get familiar with clicking the products' titles to go to the products' home. But once users will be used to this and all those products will be fully integrated with Google Search (cf. my previous comment), then they'll add a link to the all those Google logos in products' header because they won't be lost in a service (Google Search) that is independent to the product they come from (Gmail / Docs / Reader...). If they succeed, I think all users will benefit from this new navigation concept.
I don't like the current situation (unusable product logo) but it's certainly temporary: they've reverted to the dark navigation bar a few days after the release of the big toolbelt navigation menu, so they're probably still looking for a good solution.
In the meantime, it's a difficult POLA dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment): 50% of Gmail users might expect to be sent to Google's homepage by clicking the Google logo in Gmail, while the other users might expect to refresh Gmail or go back the inbox by clicking the only logo in Gmail's header. Where should Gmail's Google logo point to?
Pricing:
* Target a representative sample of the U.S. Internet population. $0.10 per response or $150.00 for 1500 responses (recommended for statistical significance).
* Target a subpopulation using inferred demographic data. $0.50 per response or $750.00 for 1500 responses (recommended for statistical significance).
About:
You create online surveys to gain consumer insight.
Which version of my new logo will people like better? How much are dog owners willing to pay for an organic cotton leash? Is my brand awareness growing over time? We all have nagging questions about our own products, companies, and industries. Now it’s easy get answers and make major decisions with your consumers’ behavior and preferences in mind. Write your own survey questions or customize existing templates. Target the entire US Internet population or specify a custom audience you’re after, whether it’s 25-34 year olds, coffee drinkers, or pet owners. Pick how many responses you want and your survey is ready to go.
People complete questions in order to access premium content.
People browsing the web come across your questions when they try to access premium content like news articles or videos. Opinions are valuable, so answering the question gives them near instant access to the page they want for free. They don’t have to pull out a wallet or sign in and you gain insight into what people think. Why one question at a time? Many researchers are used to doing multi-question surveys in which the same respondent is asked to fill out a 10+ minute questionnaire. With Google Consumer Surveys, you can run multi-question surveys by asking people one question at a time. This results in higher response rates (~40% compared with an industry standard of 0.1 - 2%) and more accurate answers. The system will automatically look for correlations between questions and pull out hypotheses.
Publishers get paid as their visitors answer.
Questions run across sites in our diverse publisher network in order to get the necessary respondents. Publishers—online news sites, video creators, and app developers—make money as site visitors provide answers. Everyone wins.
(form for publishers: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/surveysforpublishers/)
You get nicely aggregated and analyzed data.
Google automatically aggregates and analyzes responses, providing the data back to you through a simple online interface. Results appear as they come in, not days or weeks later. Results & insights In addition to raw data, charts summarize responses and insights highlight interesting differences. Using the DoubleClick cookie and the respondent’s IP address, Google Consumer Surveys infers demographic and geographic information for each response so you can easily segment by age, gender, location and more. See which results are statistically significant or order additional responses if your initial sample wasn’t sufficient. Methodology & accuracy Unlike other online survey platforms which send questionnaires to predetermined “panels,” Google Consumer Surveys takes a new approach to survey sampling, data collection and post-stratification weighting. This produces a close approximation to a random sample of the US Internet population and results that are as accurate as probability based panels.
Whitepaper comparing Google's Consumer Surveys with alernative solution: http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/static/357812...