So I was doing some searching on Google. Typically when I run a Google search, I get results displayed like so:

^[1]

Aside from the lack of ads (yes, I block ads ^[2] now) there is nothing special about the search results page: It is the standard search results page I have been seeing since… forever. A few minutes ago, however, I was shown the following:

^[3]

Notice any difference? The changes are so very subtle (the search results are more “soft”, visually speaking, than before) that I had to double-check to make sure my eyes/mind weren’t playing tricks on me.

At first I thought maybe Firefox was bugging out on me. So I closed it, reopened it, and ran a search again. Nope, the new style was still there. So then I cleared my Firefox history/cache/etc., closed it, reopened it, and ran another search. This time the results were back to normal (i.e. as shown in the first screenshot above); but after running a few more searches, the results reverted to the new look (i.e. the second screenshot shown above).

At this point I figured I should check to see if the same thing was happening with other browsers. I tested it on Internet Explorer (9), Google Chrome (11), and Opera (11.10); all of these three browsers displayed the search results in the normal/old way:

^[4]

^[5]

^[6]

So, then, this begs the question: Is Google changing how it displays search results? Or did I just come across a freak accident? Is anyone else seeing this? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…