I can see that your rant is fairly focused on the visual aspects of the changes, we have yet to hear the reasoning behind the decisions, so I can't really assume to know all the research involved in the changes.
That said, note that the search result tabs/filters change depending on what you've searched. So now, when you look for, say, flights, the flights tab will be available for filtering, and with an airplane icon, it's immediately obvious to any user that they can click on that and view flights, whereas before they would have had to read the tab. This alone gives merit to icons.
I do, however, agree that the icons for images/videos/maps/news all have the same basic shape and on that size are not super easily identifiable from one another. The news icon seems the most lazy, and the maps icon slightly baffles me in terms of level of detail on such a small scale.
What I do know is that Google is not a vanity design culture, and the changes were definitely informed and rolled out as a result of testing.
I can see that your rant is fairly focused on the visual aspects of the changes, we have yet to hear the reasoning behind the decisions, so I can't really assume to know all the research involved in the changes.
That said, note that the search result tabs/filters change depending on what you've searched. So now, when you look for, say, flights, the flights tab will be available for filtering, and with an airplane icon, it's immediately obvious to any user that they can click on that and view flights, whereas before they would have had to read the tab. This alone gives merit to icons.
I do, however, agree that the icons for images/videos/maps/news all have the same basic shape and on that size are not super easily identifiable from one another. The news icon seems the most lazy, and the maps icon slightly baffles me in terms of level of detail on such a small scale.
What I do know is that Google is not a vanity design culture, and the changes were definitely informed and rolled out as a result of testing.