Ajit should have opted for a part-by-part UI change style to reach this user interface. Over night changes always produce back fire!

This is a poor redesign by Rediff. It seems like they tried to create a Web 2.0 site, but instead created a boring text-only site without any ’2.0′ features. In some places, the site looks like those placeholder websites for discontinued domains.
Poor use of whitespace. After removing clutter, there’s still nothing catchy about the design. Only two colours are used, and the adverts are bigger than the content on some pages.
No relevant images. The News/Cricket pagez has ONE image! And it’s a tiny one about celebrity sightings. Come-on…people have broadband connections…they can handle a few large images. And please take the time to resize images before using them (check out the ‘movies’ page – the main image is scaled, not resized). Did Mr. Balakrishnan fire all his designers? Couldn’t they find another image. The image used has marie claire’s watermark!
Rich menu systems are proliferating and large drop downs have proven usability (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html), but there are no menus to speak of.
No associated content or cross linkage between sections.

To get to a list of news articles and read it in detail, I have to THREE clicks. ‘News’ -> ‘More news’ > article link. Previously it was only two.
Now say I want to switch to the ‘Cricket’ section, I have to return to the main page, making a total of FOUR clicks. Did they do any testing at all?

If as you say the focus has shifted to search-based monetization of the property, where are the ads on the search results page?
BTW, if you search for ‘rediff’ on the main page, the first result is surprisingly not rediff.com. It is astrology.rediff.com. Hmm…where is this link on the site? Oh right, it’s buried in the ‘more’ page!

I’d certainly like to read their explanations for making these changes. What was the design and business rational? It should make for interesting reading.

#1. The new design makes rediff look empty and incomplete … (There is http://www.rediff.com link above the logo on every page … white space after the content ends and footer starts … the menu in news looks like a place holder … even craigslist is more formal) I’d think there are other design to achieve “simple” and “un-clutter” look

#2. As far as I know 80% of people who visit rediff … go here for current updates and casual news. The constant flow of content as rediff updates and other uploads … is what pulls people multiple times a day … it’s like an addition for most people to keep checking rediff multiple times a day … such content is now kept many clicks away and no one looks for that. It’s impulsive stuff really.

#3. If Rediff wanted to promote other services like Video etc. menu with icons can do the trick … rather than make that the first thing on the left … when a minority come for that

#4. If Rediff wanted to show the power of the new multi-object search and promote the non-ext content they have … they could have easily show associated videos, comments, photos for every article … and slowly increase cross content navigation (like YouTube or SlideShare get u to go from one to the other)

Rediff: It is time for you to sell yourself before it is too late. If you follow my advice don’t forget my commission