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In a nod toward usability, Google increased the size of its home page’s search box and typeface Wednesday, making it easier for users to see long queries.

“Over the past 11 years, we’ve made a number of changes to our homepage,” Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president of search products and user experience, said in a blog post. “Some are small and some are large. In this case, it’s a small change that makes search more prominent.”

She acknowledged that it was a simple change but said it “makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use.”

That didn’t stop the snark from techies who considered it an underwhelming tweak. Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee blogged: “Fresh off of patenting its home page design, Google is throwing caution to the wind and messing with success: It’s making its search boxes bigger. (Gasp!)”

“Google is not just going to let Apple dominate the news today with their new product announcement and Steve Jobs re-appearance on Apple’s stage,” Arnold Zafra wrote on Search Engine Journal.

On Slashgear, Chris Davies wondered whether the change will be widely noticed, since so many Web users search through browser toolbars, mobile applications or Google’s own Chrome browser.

Softpedia’s Lucian Parfeni said the update might be a concession to netbooks, since larger fonts and Chrome itself take advantage of smaller screens. “With Google planning to get into netbooks with its very own, purpose-built operating system, Chrome OS, and netbooks being the perfect home for its suite of web apps, it doesn’t take too much of a stretch of the imagination to say that Google is really interested in the minute mobile computers and that it would modify its homepage to make it easier to use on the small screens,” he said.