Encourage Google to Validate

Dear Google,

I, like millions of my fellow internet citizens, love Google. I can't imagine an internet without it. You've changed the way I search the internet. Your company motto, "Don't be evil", is a breath of fresh air in an often greedy and exploitively commercial internet. Your homepage is a brilliant model of functionality reigning supreme, and the greatest testament to that is the way Yahoo, MSN and even Amazon are playing catch-up to you.

Which is why I was so disappointed when I was so disappointed to learn that your website doesn't validate, nor even come close! How can this be? How can the homepage of Google, probably the single most visited page anywhere on the internet, not be compliant with the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium?

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, it's not the worst sin. Browsers have long since tolerated errors in HTML, to the degree that most authors don't even know about standards compliance, let alone particularly care.

So then why does it matter if Google doesn't validate? Well, first of all, because you're Google. If Google doesn't validate, what motivation is there for other sites to do so? To whatever degree you can lead by example, you should.

But it also matters because Google employs some of the very smartest people in Silicon Valley, and that's saying something. Your hiring practices are legendary for weeding out the brilliant from the merely very, very smart. And that pays off, as your uncannily accurate search results, your leaping stock price and your phenomenal uptime can attest. If Google is the model of what great minds greatly motivated can do, then every aspect of Google should reflect that. We hold Google to a higher standard because that is the standard you have set for yourselves, so it's disappointing to see such a cavalier attitude towards helping the cause of good HTML on the web, not to mention the simple pride in craftsmanship that comes with a well authored page.

Now, of course, I understand some of the reasons behind this. As I mentioned, the Google homepage is probably the single most visited page anywhere on the internet. With that comes a premium on every single byte in that homepage. But that's no reason to leave out a doctype. Or to quote attributes where needed, or to encode your own URLs properly. And it is certainly not a reason to use table-based markup, which carries a high premium in extraneous, unnecessary and semantically meaningless tags.

All of this brings up another important point. Even if the basic validation errors are fixed, the homepage for Google would still not be a model for good HTML. Make no mistake, it would be leaps and bounds better than not validating at all, but certainly less than I expect from Google. Ditch the tables and embrace CSS. You can do without them. You can do without the attributes on the body tag. You can do without "

" after your logo. You can do without the tags. And the upside of this is that your page will be as small or possibly even smaller than the page you have now.

And of course, this can go so far beyond the Google home page. The search results themselves are certainly no better in terms of validation or good code.

In the end, of all the companies on the web, and that pretty much means all companies, you're in the best position to integrate standards compliance into your website. You've got the resources, you've got more than enough skill, talent and brainpower, and you clearly have a dedication to technical excellence and innovation that is driving the industry in positive ways. If you were to remake Google.com into a standards compliant, well crafted home on the web, you'll be doing what you've always done and what we all admire you for: You'll be making the internet better.

(An expanded version of this open letter can be found at http://www.markkawakami.com/entries/1184.html)