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September 19, 2013 09:11 pm GMT

Google's New App Launcher Style Navigational Menu Weeks Away From Launch

google-navGoogle is reportedly making a change to its homepage and other online services which will see it dropping its horizontal, black navigational bar containing links to social, search, Gmail, images, news, and more, in favor of a new menu that more closely resembles the app launcher icon found on Android smartphones. The new square-shaped button which instead launches an app grid containing colorful icons pointing to Google’s various properties, will appear at the top of Google websites, next to the notifications button and links to users’ profiles. This design has been in testing for the better part of 2013, with some seeing the then experimental interface as early as February, according to the unofficial Google-watching blog, Google Operating System, which was also among the first to spot what appears to be official confirmation of the new design’s ETA by a Google employee. On a Google+ post where a user was sharing a screenshot of the updated look-and-feel, Google+ Community Manager Justine Rivero commented, “Glad you noticed! We’ll be rolling out this new feature in the next few weeks…stay tuned!” Before today, Google has only been showing the updated navigation menu to portions of its user base as an experiment. It had not yet announced that the menu would be more broadly rolled out. Searches on Google+ this morning indicate that a number of users are beginning to receive the changes, and are posting screenshots with comments like “gone is the black bar,” “no black bar,” and so on. Twitter users are seeing the same thing. Other sitesare also reporting that the new navigational menu will appear across Google properties beyond Google+, including Search, Gmail, Blogger, YouTube and more. The same “app launcher” interface has been seen on Chrome’s new tab page, where it can currently be enabled as an experiment, too. At present, the launcher shows icons for top Google services likeGoogle+, Search, YouTube, Maps, Play, News, Gmail, Drive, and Calendar, but allows you to access others by clicking “More.” This revealsTranslate, Books, Offers, Wallet, Shopping, Blogger, Finance and Google+ Photos. Three services found on the black nav bar, but not in the new menu, are Images, Videos, and Google Mobile. The updated menu makes sense for Google, as it’s trying to streamline its properties across platforms, including Chrome OS, Android, desktop web, mobile web, mobile apps, and other online services. The new navigation menu looks like the Chrome OS

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