Google X disappears

CNet reported Google's latest technology experiment paid tribute to Apple Computer, but the Mac OS X-themed version of the search king's Web site was taken down a day after its debut.

Google software engineer Chikai Ohazama played up his work, Google X, on the company's blog on Tuesday. Located on Google's test site, Google X featured an alternate way to connect to various services, allowing people to click on a series of graphical icons in a method inspired by a feature in Apple's operating system.
Google OS X page

As of Wednesday afternoon, however, the Web page was inaccessible.

The site functioned much like the Dock feature that exists in Apple's OS X. There was a row of icons for various Google services, and as a user hovered over a particular icon, it was magnified. The similar Dock feature on the Mac exists at the bottom of the screen, allowing a user to quickly get to frequently used programs, documents and Web sites.

Google specifically called out the similarity with a message on the Google X page. "Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you," the message said.

Apple has sought patent protection for the "Genie Effect" used in the Dock.

Google X may be gone, but blogger Chikai Ohazama's original post about Google X is still on the Google Blog

The URL was http://labs.google.com/googlex/, and I tried to view it using Wayback Machine but http://labs.google.com/ apparently uses the Robots.txt Query Exclusion to prevent other search engines from cacheing their site. Their robots.txt file shows they allow cacheing by User-agent: googlebot, but I could not figure out how to activate Google's cache display, but fortunately CNet captured the page when it was up, and you can see it here.

Blogger EB has a zip archive of the Google X homepage here (~90kb) and a live version of Google X

I am sorry to see it disappear. It looks like it might have been an interesting tool.