For years, Google was famous for its clean, uncluttered layout and its excellent search algorithms. Those days are long gone.

Google gets 96% of its annual revenue from advertising. Search results produce no revenue. That has led to some tremendous distortions and a horrifying breakdown in the once-clean Google experience.

I present Exhibit A, which I discovered thanks to Twitter.

If you’re signed in to your Google+ account and you search for pet meds, a little ad module appears at the top of the search results, with your email address already filled in.

I’m sure there are other search terms that will lead to similar results, but this is the first one I’ve seen.

The idea of pre-filling the lead-generating form is a little creepy, but technically there’s no privacy violation. After all, I gave Google my email address and used it to sign in, and they’re not sharing it with anyone unless I click the Get offers button.

But here’s what was more disturbing about those search results. I captured a screen shot showing the results page as it appears on a notebook with a 1366 x 768 screen—one of the most popular display resolutions available today. See if you notice anything odd (click to open the screenshot in its own window if you want to study it more carefully):

There is only ONE actual search result on that entire page. If you want to see the rest of the search results, you have to page down.

Surrounding that link are nine ads, plus a link to a PetMeds user account at Google+. There are 10 links to Google services at the top of the page. Below that is my Google+ profile picture (which leads to my Google+ account settings) and a big Share box.

That’s a total of 23 links on that page, as it appears on a typical computer. Only one is a search result.

That’s just wrong.

Update: As @BleepinComputer notes on Twitter, this is ironic, given Google’s January 2012 public statement on this exact issue, published on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog:

[W]e’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

Huh. Imagine that.

Are you planning to test the Windows 8 Consumer Preview? Make sure you pick up a product key. Unlike Windows 7, you can’t skip this box and fill in a key later.

If you use the web installer, a key is generated and filled in automatically for you. If you download an ISO disk image and create your own installation media, on the other hand, you’ll need to type in a 25-character key.

Where do you get a Windows 8 Consumer Preview product key?

Microsoft has published two keys that anyone can use.

The ISO download page includes this public key:

DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview FAQ has a different key:

NF32V-Q9P3W-7DR7Y-JGWRW-JFCK8

If you’re eager to get started, go to this page: Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

I’ve got lots and lots of information to help you with your evaluation here:

Getting started with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (ZDNet)

Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more: Building Firefox for Windows 8 Metro

.. we should be able to build a single product, that when installed into the Classic environment via traditional means — a download from http://www.mozilla.org, will be able to become both the default browser in the Classic environment and in the new Metro environment. We’ll, of course, have a Metro-specific front-end that fits in with the new environment, but we will not have to deploy two completely different browsers.

[I]f we do our job, Firefox on Windows 8 Metro should be every bit as capable and integrated with the system as Internet Explorer.

Microsoft had an awful big head start with IE 10 but now that we know what’s possible, we hope to close that gap.

I am seriously rooting for these guys,

This came up in a conversation the other day and it was too good not to share.

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, MD, is one of the best-selling business books of all time. It’s sold tens of millions of copies and has been translated into 42 languages.

Originally published in 1998, it’s a very short book, written as a parable about two mice and two humans who live in a maze. An Amazon reviewer offers this nice summary:

Although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Things change. They always have changed and always will change. And while there’s no single way to deal with change, the consequence of pretending change won’t happen is always the same: The cheese runs out.

With Windows 8, Microsoft moved a lot of cheese.

I understand the reasons why the Windows 8 design is so radically different. It’s a break with the past that had to be made at some point, and there really isn’t a graceful way to do it incrementally.

I think Microsoft is confident that people will embrace the new interface if they choose to accept it. But the amount of pushback I see from stubborn, sophisticated users is high.

Oh my:

What’s most remarkable is I didn’t hear a single complaint from anyone saying they were experiencing slow downloads or server problems.

At 2-3 GB per download, that’s an impressive performance. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, Microsoft and its partner Akamai Technologies served up something like 3 petabytes of Windows 8 downloads in 24 hours.

That’s a lot of data.

Last month, yet another Silicon Valley blowhard pronounced Microsoft “irrelevant.”

In fact, that’s the message you’re likely to hear just about everywhere you go inside the bubble that is Silicon Valley. It’s repeated in the tech press, which falls over itself to see who can be the first to analyze the meaning of the latest cryptic invitation from Apple.

And then, every once in a while, actual data arrives from the outside world. Like this month’s report from Net Market Share, which tracks usage of desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers worldwide.

Here’s what the world looked like in February 2012, as measured by Net Market Share:

Oh, look! Worldwide, 8% of all desktop/portable computer users are still running the hated, reviled Windows Vista. That’s more than all users of OS X and Linux combined.

And, of course, if you add up the number of Windows XP users (dominated by enterprises) and Windows 7 (mostly consumers and small businesses), the percentage is more than 10 times the total of all OS X and Linux users combined.

That’s from a worldwide base of nearly 1.5 billion traditional computers—PCs and Macs.

Pretty good for an irrelevant company.

Skype, now a division of Microsoft, has announced the availability of Skype Beta for Windows Phone, with free video calling.

Before you rush off to install it, note a few caveats:

• It’s a beta, so not all features are working properly.
• The only supported language is English (“we plan to expand the number of languages in the production release”).
• The app doesn’t run in the background, so you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or instant messages unless the app is open in the foreground.
• Video calling works only in landscape mode.
• You can’t add or manage contacts from the app.

Those are some pretty serious limitations, especially the inability to run in the background. Calling it a beta seems ambitious—it’s really more of a technology demonstration.

Perhaps a more polished version will be ready in April, when a major update to Windows Phone (codenamed “Tango”) is due. Liveside has the details of that release.

If you decide to give the Skype app a try, leave your feedback in the comments.

If I seem quiet here lately, it’s because I’ve been very busy preparing for this week’s launch of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

As a teaser, let me share this extremely unofficial, community-generated DVD artwork from Vlad, the proprietor of a Windows enthusiast blog in Romania.

The idea is that you can download the code after Microsoft releases it and use this artwork as a custom label when you burn the ISO to DVD. This really is a throwback—an homage, even—to the days when Windows beta testers received physical shipments of installation media, sometimes weekly.

Those days are long gone, and the role of the enthusiast beta tester has shrunk in an age of telemetry-driven design and automated test. But it’s not completely forgotten.

I saw another, similarly enthusiastic post this week at The Verge, of all places, where a forum member created a series of Zune-inspired visual mockups that made it to a front-page article and got a thumbs-up from Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky.

The mockups are indeed handsome and clearly display some design talent. Chances they’ll make it into Windows 8 are nil, of course. That ship has sailed.

I used to get one of these designs, sometimes with videos and detailed explanations of the underlying design concepts, every couple months back in pre-Vista days. It’s interesting to see that enthusiasm return.

Bloomberg News has an oddly worded report this morning that says Google “will allow a ‘do-not-track’ button to be embedded in its Web browser…”

The report doesn’t say Google will actually respect that setting. (The proposed Do Not Track standard is a form of self-regulation that requires users to opt in, after which websites may—but do not have to—stop tracking them on the web.)

Google Agrees to ‘Do-Not-Track’ Button in Browser – Bloomberg

The world’s most popular search engine will join with other Web companies to support the anti-tracking initiative, which prevents an individual’s browsing history from being used to tailor ads, according to an e-mailed statement today.

“We’re pleased to join a broad industry agreement to respect the ‘do-not-track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly explained browser controls,” Google Senior Vice President of Advertising Susan Wojcicki said in the statement.

That part about agreeing to “respect the ‘do-not-track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way” leaves an awful lot of wiggle room.

It’s worth noting that Google, unlike some of its rivals, does not have an executive in charge of privacy issues. The statement sent via email today came from Google’s Senior Vice President of Advertising.

That says a lot in and of itself, don’t you think?

I have contacted a Google spokesperson and requested a copy of the email in question. I’ll update this post when I receive it.

Update: A Google spokesperson responded with a copy of the emailed statement, which consists of the single quoted statement. The spokesperson also included a link to a post by Wojcicki on the Google Public Policy Blog. It too does not include any details on how Google plans to implement Do Not Track.

In practical terms, this announcement won’t change much, but from a symbolic point of view it’s very big news indeed:

Microsoft quietly extends consumer support for Windows 7, Vista

Microsoft is updating the Support Lifecycle policy for Windows desktop operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The update will provide a more consistent and predictable experience for customers using Microsoft Windows operating systems across OEM, consumer and business editions.

Microsoft still requires that customers have the most current Service Pack installed in order to continue to receive updates.

Through this update, customers who remain on the most current supported service pack will be eligible to receive both Mainstream and Extended Support, for a total of 10 years.

Don’t confuse the support lifecycle with the sales lifecycle, though. You can’t buy Windows XP or Windows Vista today, even though they’re still supported. And as I explain in the linked post, the clock begins ticking for Windows 7 as soon as Windows 8 is released. OEMs will be able to sell Windows 7 with new PCs for exactly two years after Windows 8 is released, at which point all sales stop.