The Cola Wars (1985)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_Wars

Coca-Cola was the long time dominant cola brand. In the 1980's Pepsi began a taste test marketing campaign. Given a sip of Pepsi and a sip of Coke in a blind taste test people seemed to prefer Pepsi. On April 23, 1985 Coca-Cola changed the formula of their cola to more resemble Pepsi. Pepsi ran a full page ad in which Roger Enrico, CEO of Pepsi said "After 87 years of going at it eyeball to eyeball, the other guy just blinked".

Consumers did not like the change. Loyal Coke drinkers preferred something that did not taste like Pepsi. Loyal Pepsi drinkers preferred Pepsi. On July 10, 1985 Coca-Cola reintroduced the old formula under the new brand "Coca-Cola Classic". Coke customers shunned the flagship "Coca-Cola" (a.k.a. "new Coke") in favor of "Classic". The "New Coke" faded away. If you look closely at the current Coke labels in the US market they still say "Classic" on them.

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The Search Engine Wars (2010)

Google was the long time dominant search engine brand. On June 1, 2009 Microsoft revamped their search engine and renamed it "bing". On May 5, 2010 Google modified both their search page and results pages to more resemble bing. "Since 1998, going at it eyeball for eyeball, Google just 'binged'"

The new results page displays an "everything" sidebar, that many loyal Google users dislike. The new results page also lacks the classic blue bar with the current result numbers and a link to a definition of the search term.

Now there is a link to a Google search page that produces an old style results page. I call it "Sanbar Search" (i.e. without the sidebar). It still lacks the link to the search term definition.

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all

This may have been an accident, but it is what many users want. I hope that Google retains it for those that want "Classic Google".

© 2010 GKR

Insightful post!

Regarding your copyright sign, I think it works this way: if you choose to post to a site that has a declared licensing policy, you give that site an implied license to publish your comment under its declared licensing policy. (I'm not speaking officially for this site though.)

awesome find... i gots my google back!!!

Earlier I provided a link to a search page that produces a classic results page.

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all

Here, I will provide instructions to set this in you Google preferences, so you will not need to use the link. You may still want to use the link on your web pages for the benefit of others.

The goal is to change the interface language to "all".
This is not a normal preference option.
This can be easily approximated by setting the interface language to "Elmer Fudd" instead of "all", but the interface text may become peculiar.

Below are more complicated directions for properly setting the interface language to "all". I will first give an overview and then more detailed instructions.

Overview
1. Load the google preferences page.
2. Save a copy of the page on your computer.
3. Modify the saved copy to provide for changing to "all".
4. Load the modified page.
5. Select "Classic Results" from the interface languages to change the value to "all".
6. Submit with the "Save Preferences" button.

Details
Warning: The forum software may butcher some of the below directions.
Check for another post if something looks strange.

1. Preferences for the server google.com is http://www.google.com/preferences
If you use a different server find the correct page.
It may be found from the search page by selecting "settings" and then "search settings".

2. Browsers usually have a method of saving a page. Typically select "file" and then "save page as" from the menu bar. Save a copy of the preferences page on your computer.

3a. Open the saved file with a text editor. Windows users can use notepad.
3b. Find "action" in the file.
3c. It should say 'action="/setprefs"'.
3d. Modify it to say 'action="http://www.google.com/setprefs"'
If you are using a different server than "google.com", use its domain here instead.
3e. Find 'name="hl"'.
3f. Between the next ">" and "<" insert the following:
<option value="all">Classic Results </option>
3g. Save the changes to the file and close the editor.
4a. Connect to the internet.
4b. Load the saved page in your browser.
5a. Select "Classic Results" from the interface languages.
5b. Select any other preferences you desire.
6. Submit the selections with the "Save Preferences" button.
7. Test your changes by doing a Google search.

Part 3d. was butchered.

3d. Modify it to say 'action="xxxx://www.google.com/setprefs"'
If you are using a different server than "google.com", use its domain here instead. Change the "xxxx" to "http".

The directions I posted for setting the Google preferences to generate classic style results pages has another effect besides hiding or disabling the "everything" sidebar on the results pages. The older style logo displays on both the search page (google.com) and the results page. I did not notice this yesterday because there was a special doodle. If you are alert to this on the search page it may be a hint to which style the results page will have. Another clue is whether the bottom of the search page offers a link "Google.com in English".

Long ago the blue bar used to have a link to the definitions of the search terms. More recently it only had a link to the definition of the term if the search only had one term. The methods I have been using to generate this classic blue bar style results page instead of the newer "everything" sidebar style results page did not seem to provide the definition functionality.

I just saw the defintion link appear on several results pages. I am not sure what the exact circumstances are. It may be server dependent. So far, I have only seen it appear when using Internet Explorer.

Has anyone else observed this?