Google Reverted to Old Layout

I do not think there is much love between Google and Apple these days... sadly...

Spats such as Apple's Maps app tried to replace Google Maps had been brewing... In June of this year it was stated early users of Mac OS X Yosemite have learned that its brand-new uber-smart Spotlight search — the front-and-center box that finds all things everywhere, the one that begs to relieve you of the inconvenience of a browser-based Google search — is powered by Bing. Tim Cook at the WWDC keynote said The Safari browser was faster and more efficient by all metrics than Google Chrome. it was said 'Larry Page (of Google) surely knows his company's weakness in this fight — it is the leader of a large but balkanized and often backward Android nation, riddled with unacceptable levels of malware.'

oh boy...

6 days ago many web sites reported that Google Images had been hacked...

For a period of time if you searched Google images you would receive pictures of a car crash (apparently originally from a Ukrainian news site) and occasionally pictures of Kevin Durant. Users reported the fault all over the world as you can see from Google’s own support forums (and numerous other forums too) and then struggled to clean up their browser so that they could get normal results.

A Google spokesperson stated that the problem was an “internal issue” but Google has yet to comment on the root cause of the problem. The issue started to clean up for users August 28th and 29th 30th... coincidentally when google search, reverse image search and image search reverted to the old style for Apple Mac OS Leopard and Snow Leopard users running older versions of Safari...

this may be a coincidence but now for Leopard and Snow leopard users Safari (and Firefox I believe) browsers are showing an old version of Google Search that is buggy and the reverse image search icon is gone... my partners PC laptop with an old (6 years old) Internet Explorer works fine...

On the google forum there were many questions asked of 'why?'...initial replies back from Google admin were>>>

'Hi xxxxxx,

Welcome to Google Search Help Forum.

Try clearing the caches and cookies from your browser.

If that doesn't help, visit the link below and see if you can browse images using the Standard version of Google:-

images.google.com'

more dissatisfaction and then posts being marked 'this post is a duplicate' and re directed to the answer previously mentioned shown below...

'Hi everyone,

Thanks for the reports. I want to assure you this isn't a bug, it's working as intended.

We’re continually making improvements to Search, so we can only provide limited support for some outdated browsers. We encourage everyone to make the free upgrade to modern browsers -- they’re more secure and provide a better web experience overall.

Thanks, nealem'

this was marked by Nealem as 'the best answer' but received 92 thumbs down... and 3 thumbs up...

finally when people said the clearing the caches and cookies from your browser and people saying for what ever reason they did not want to upgrade their browser due to cost (needing a newer mac etc) was not working I got this...

I found this thread and think that it might be related to my latest dilemma -- re: Google Images search results.

Up until a few days ago (i.e. August 2014 and for the past few years) it always looked like this (see attached -- had to capture this particular screen from FireFox for illustrations purposes) --

This allows a user to quickly locate an image and the thumbnails are fairly large and legible. Now it looks like this --

Uggh. Terrible user interface and not at all useful.

Any comments? I am using Safari 5.1.10 on Mac OS X v 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Thanks.

Graphic Designer, Tucson, AZ wrote:

I found this thread and think that it might be related to my latest dilemma -- re: Google Images search results.

Up until a few days ago (i.e. August 2014 and for the past few years) it always looked like this (see attached -- had to capture this particular screen from FireFox for illustrations purposes) --

This allows a user to quickly locate an image and the thumbnails are fairly large and legible. Now it looks like this --

Uggh. Terrible user interface and not at all useful.

Any comments? I am using Safari 5.1.10 on Mac OS X v 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Thanks.

Yeah, I hate the layout as well. I come to find out that Google's overlapped layout is for Lion and up and not for Snow Leopard. I tested it by going over to the other partition that has Lion on it, on my computer and overlapped layout is what I get there. Google didn't take into consideration that there are still a lot of folks using Snow Leopard.

@royallaura13
Hi, since this morning I'm experiencing exactly the same problem. Unfortunnately my internet resurch was unsuccessful. I really hope someone is able to help us with this. If you find yourself any solution, please don't hesitate to post. Thanks, Dimitri

I have the problem as well. It has happened before, after I went to a cached page from a Google search, but I was able to reset and clear Safari. This time, the old page is staying. I sent several messages to Google and one to Apple.

Does anyone know if we could update one version of Safari on this old OS, and perhaps that would clear the issue?

Same problem on our iMac (running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 / Safari 5.1.10) - old version of Google search engine and also old version of Google images.

Strangely, both iPads we have are also running the old version of Google search (but Google images ok).....??!!!!!!

HELPPPPPPPPPPPPP !!!!!

I have the same problem (using Snow Leopard 10.6.8). It just started today, I'm hoping it's a google thing and not a safari thing. I tried looking for safari updates, and tried restarting my comp/safari and resetting safari and it doesn't seem to have worked. Hopefully this will be fixed by tomorrow -- I didn't realize how annoying the old version of Google was.

Yeh, it's happening to all of us on 10.6.8 and Safari 5.1.10, and looks like all I hear is you have to update to a new browser, Well I believe that for those of us on Snow Leopard, we can't get a newer version of Safari, Am I correct?

Issue seems to be buzzing over the web now - also in the USA.

Found the below on Google's own product site.

It worked for me - the current version of Google is restored, but if you 'reset' safari it goes back to the old version again.

Looks like a google issue not an iMac/Apple issues - guess Google will either resolve or we will need to update Safari or possibly Snow Leopard OS to Lion or Mavericks ?? (which I don't want to do / not sure if I can do on my 2010 iMac)

Link is:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!search/google$20homepage$20had$20reve rted$20to$20old/websearch/hEVDmDw8ccU%5B1-25-true%5D

Text below:

MadFranko008 Level 3

Same thing happening to me. Google images reverted to old basic version in Safari. Images are working properly in Firefox and other browsers. In Firefox at the bottom of the page it has a link to "Switch to basic version" so I would think there would be a link at the bottom of the Safari page saying "switch to standard version" but there isn't. This happened without me changing any settings. Clearing cache, resetting Safari does nothing. Very frustrating!

the fact that we did nothing and changed nothing, and it worked fine for us on Safari 2 days ago, for years, is a disgrace on Google's part.

Why should I upgrade my OS just for Google? Safari is as high as it goes on SL 10.6.8, and It's done the job OK.

Google should hang their heads in shame if this is not going to be sorted out. What a joke. I bet they'd do it for Windows users

Ditto here! Also blue search items don't turn lavender after I search. No way to tell what pages I visited.

NOTE: I did get a message 2-3 days ago that my browser is unsupported by Google, or that Google is unsupported by my browser.

The message told me to "upgrade my browser," which I promptly ignored.

Is this problem similar to why facetime is no longer functional on my iPhone 4s? I do not wish to upgrade my phone either. So I guess I'll get left behind????

Hi Guys,

This is Nealem's reply from this link: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/hEVDmDw8ccU/lQb5yPSU2KgJ

She seems to be a Google's employ or associated with Google and she clearly states that "it's working as intended".

But the whole thing stinks. If you open this link: https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2451522?hl=en

you will see that Safari 4.0+ should be supported. At least this is my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Same problem here (South of Europe) since last 2014_08_28THU, after shutting down at 18:00. When I returned to my iMac at the end of the night I noticed Google acting old-fashionally. Google Images doesn't have the upload image icon anymore & the thumbnails layout looks older and when I click the arrow for Cache & Similar I can see its hotspot shape. Really lame!

However there's something that made me suspect that this was not a Google thing. There's a 2nd hand stuff website that I go to everything & it's behaving erratically now!...
The User Agent / Other fix suggested before didn't do anything in my case.

It's understandable that the users of Safari 5.1.10 may not be allowed to have access to new features, due to not upgrading to a new OSX, but it's unacceptable that our internet experience in Safari gets WORSE!

I'm sure we can all agree on the fact that if if was "working as intended" we wouldn't all be having this issue. It is clearly not working as intended and it reverted to the old version without any of us doing anything to make it happen.

I read the post the Google employee wrote in the link above and it says we should "make the free upgrade to modern browsers...they're more secure and provide a better web experience overall."

Seriously Google employee Nealem??? Is that a direct dis to Apple/Safari? We should be able to decide what browser we would like to use and Google should work properly. Safari is not an outdated browser and most of us here have checked and confirmed that we have the latest version.

Maybe when they say it is "working as intended" that means they intentionally made it revert to the old version to force us to use a different browser. I am pretty sure that if Google can manage to take photos of every freakin' house and put them on Google earth, they could fix this issue if they wanted to.