Over the past couple of weeks Google has been teasing “a new look” for its sign-in page but, after finally revealing it, many have been underwhelmed. It leads to the question – why did Google so prominently announce this change?
In early February 2024, Google started showing a banner when you signed into or picked a Google account. The banner, which came back frequently even after being dismissed, read:
A new look is coming soon
Google is improving its sign-in page with a modern look and feel
For roughly two weeks, Google showed this banner each and every time a user visited a sign-in page, both on mobile and desktop. Understandably, we were all pretty curious to see what Google had in store given the prominent teaser.
Earlier this week, Google finally offered a first look at the redesigned sign-in page.
The new design works rather similarly to what we’ve been used to, but with the UI elements adjusted around a bit and a design that adds a splash of blue-grey to the background. It’s certainly more modern-looking, but ultimately it was a fairly minor revamp.
The announcement has led to some questioning why Google teased this redesign for two weeks with such a prominent banner. The answer to that is actually quite simple though.
Google wasn’t preparing for some drastic updated design, but needed to very clearly communicate a change to a sensitive part of its product. For millions of users, Google accounts are more than just another log-in to keep track of. Google accounts can hold your email, your cloud storage, years of photo/video backups, a YouTube channel, and so much more. For many, their Google sign-in is essentially the key to their digital lives, so any change to how that sign-in is handled is a rather big deal.
If Google had just started rolling out this new look with a blog post to announce it, only a tiny fraction of users would actually know what’s going on. And, for anyone sensitive to their online security, a suddenly redesigned login page is a red flag. And that’s not even to dive into the many phishing attempts that could have come from an unexpected reading. With all of that in mind, Google’s decision to widely shout about this redesign was a wise one.
The new Google sign-in page is rolling out now and will be available to all users over the coming weeks.
More on Google:
- Chrome 122 rolling out ‘Help me write’ in any text field
- Androidify strikes back: Google now lets you create a custom Android ‘Bot’
- Google temporarily disables AI image generation of people in Gemini
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