Is rediff trying to be next google with this search centric design?

It was really good to see the rediff new design for international web site. It gives a feeling of rediff’s intensions to be next Google or competitors to them. I have few serious questions about the design and its impact on their traffic. It is really surprising to see how an experienced company can make mistakes like this one.

Rediff is mainly used as an email service with some additional feature added, such as crispy headlines and now music, videos and some other shopping features. All these helped them to increase on time on site.

With new design they tied to imitate google and tried to look more search centric than earlier version, which was a copy of yahoo for Indian audience.

I have a rediff account since last 8 years and used their service when I was young and not familiar with the leaders in the same domain.

I think the following design changes may hurt the traffic at rediff.

First their search engine centric looks. I have the best search (google) for me. I never used rediff search for anything (I m sorry) and may not that in near future.

Cricket: I used to refer to quick cricket scores while tying to check email. Now if need to click for this I better click on cricinfo in new tab of my browser. Cricinfo give a better specialized info to me than rediff.

Similarly a vedio clip or movie song name attracted me to click and go through them. But now it’s all behind a click. If I need to click for music I go to imeem for vedios I go to youtube and other specialized services instead of using going and searching for on rediff.

News: I used to read it on rediff because of their headlines on front page. Stopped it because of repeated old stories and third graded uncivilized comments from their audience that were never moderated. If need to click on news and search through it, why not go to NDTV, TOI, or some other professional services.

I never used their Money and Mypage services so don’t have much to comment on it. I use blogspot for blobgging and use orkut and facebook for mypage. Also have a twitter account and no more interested in any other profile page sorry !!!!


The only thing I would like to share is, I used all these services because they were available on the front page. If I need to go for a click I use my browsers bookmark toolbar to click for expert and professional services.

Anyways, good luck rediff for the new design.