I love Google. Everyone loves Google. I love it because it finds the information I need, incredibly fast. But I mainly love it because it's easy to use. It's hard to imagine, in fact, how it could be any easier to use. There's no way to miss the box to enter your keyword into. There's nothing else to be distracted by. The page is a marvel of simplicity. According to an interview with Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, in Fast Company last November, "[Google's homepage] gives you what you want, when you want it, rather than everything you could ever want, even when you don't."
Such simplicity isn't easy to maintain, however. Mayer constantly fights off content that would create more clutter on the page. Think about how good a gatekeeper you are in your own office. The lure of more, newer information is very strong, but consuming it, digesting it, ordering it, analyzing it, etc. takes oodles of your time. It's up to you to set limits so that you actually push some work out the door.
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