Google's Ssearch Homepage Gets Background Images
Posted Fri, Jun 11, 2010 by Erica Abratique
Google recently released a new feature that enabled users to add full-screen background images to the Google search homepage. The feature, which was announced about a week ago on Google’s official blog, is quite a big change for a website/homepage that has long prided itself on its classic, minimalist look. It was to be a part of Google’s search page overhaul, which includes a page-look makeover and new Caffeine-indexing engine.
In relation to this new feature, Google decided to conduct an experiment last Wednesday, June 10, 2010; they switched on the new feature by default. The original plan was for the Google search homepage to go through a series of background images in 24 hours before returning to its original, Spartan look.
To quote the official blog post by Google’s Vice President for Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Ann Mayer:
“To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we‘ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Included in the collection are photographs of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma (隈研吾), Kwon, Ki-soo (권기수) and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic. We’ll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours.”
However, the dramatic change, though temporary, caused consternation among Google users. For those of you are wondering how much chaos the experiment has caused, the phrase “remove Google background image” appeared on Google Trends and remained on the Hot Searches list for quite some time. Looks like a lot of Google users missed the announcement from Google’s official blog.
After 14 hours of pandemonium among its users, Google decided to pull the plug early. Another post on Google’s blog explained that the experiment’s early demise was caused by a “bug”.
The official blog post update by Google’s VP Marissa Ann Mayer goes like this:
“Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users’ choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special “doodle” that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it—in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.”
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