Most importantly, though, this is a major step in Google’s ongoing quest to bring their desktop, phone, and tablet, and Chromebook experiences into alignment. Google’s over-arching sign-in page, which stands guard between anonymous users and everything from Maps to Fit to Gmail, is a perfect example. Like city planners, web designers often create spaces that get embedded in people’s minds and become familiar through sheer constancy over years of frequent use. In principle, this should make it quicker to log in without the need to use the mouse or tab button to switch between input boxes. The biggest change is the new design’s loss of separated username/password boxes in favor of a single box that switches to take the password after receiving the username. Other users should be seeing the update, already. Users should start seeing the new design over the coming days, with an alert appearing at the bottom of their screens for a few days beforehand. This week the search giant ( or is at an A.I giant?) announced that it will be updating the sign in page for Gmail over the coming weeks, as part of an overall move toward erasing the distinctions between phone, tablet, and desktop browsing, whether or not its users actually want that change. The march of cross-platform integration never ceases, least of all at Google.
