HitChrome

Some time back, Google executive Marissa Mayer had made an impassioned - not to mention lengthy and kind of complicated argument over on Google’s blog about how much effort the company has to put in to keeping its home page clean. We were told it’s space is sacred: you can’t add new stuff to it, because it makes the homepage all cluttered and messy. That’s not Googley.

The real idea was to explain that the company had decided to add a link to its privacy policies on the homepage - with the underlying implication being that privacy was so important it deserved space on that hallowed virtual wall.

All that means very little in the long run. After all, the company’s supposed 28 word limit doesn’t count promotional text - and we’ve had plenty of that recently. Indeed, just a few weeks after Mayer’s post, we were suddenly treated to a big old link telling us to download Chrome, Google’s new browser. It didn’t last too long, but it was still there.

I noticed today another new addition: a link trying to get users to buy the T-Mobile G1/ You remember, the Google-powered phone.

That link adds nine words - a 33% increase in wordcount. Not very Googley, really, is it?