Am I Google Or Am I Bing
This morning I came into work and did the usual stuff fired up Firefox and Google has loaded a lovely background image to what only can be described as a neatly piled batch of 4”x4” wood with a shed roof on the top.
To us the text isn’t that easy to read as the wood is pretty lightly coloured and it looks like the cleaner has placed the image for a joke, because the 2nd g of Google is placed over the end edge of one of the pieces of wood which in turn is a lighter colour, so it looks like the G has been altered.
If they had chosen a really nice scenic picture and it was displayed in a slightly higher res then it might not be as bad. But that’s after thought for you.
“Curious about today’s homepage? Add your own background image now”
Well yes I’m curious as how to remove the image as I want the old style Google back and if I wanted to look at an image every time I loaded up a search engine then I’d head over to Bing and use their decision engine “Cough Cough”.
Gary 1079 days ago
Choosing the white background image makes it look even worse!
DangerMouse 1079 days ago
Google have screwed up on this one – failed usibility – forcing signups to remove – even when you are logged in the “Change obnoxious picture” functionality doesn’t work! All in all a catalogue of errors.
rory 1079 days ago
Unlucky, I hope they will remove it sooner rather than later
Guido de Bruijn 1079 days ago
http://www.guidodebruijn.nlMany things can be said, but ‘simply aweful’ does a good job of summing them all up.
Becky 1079 days ago
http://www.beckynaylor.co.ukI’m getting a striped field of colourful tulips .. which is a bit much for first thing in the morning. Well done to Google for being so leading edge and innovative with their ideas! I wonder if Bing set any copyright / patent to the use of images on the home page of the search engine?
Matt Saunders 1079 days ago
http://www.digitalfusionmag.comYea, also after you change the bg image then select “change background image” again, it restores to the original. programming fail.
David Whitehouse 1079 days ago
http://www.david-whtehouse.org/Here here Becky, I think it’s awesome, I now have a beautiful relaxing photo of a plant close up!
Dave 1079 days ago
http://www.djb31st.co.ukHow come i appear to be the only one not getting these? (annoying as they are)
Logged in or logged out on multiple browsers and i get nothing here in Cyprus
Kevin Miller 1079 days ago
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=52d49a85dcfbdb9f&hl=en&start=80
I hate it. Tell them how you feel.
Robin Parduez 1079 days ago
http://rpardz.com/Although it’s just a bit of fun, I would like the option to remove the image and go back to a white background. Until then I’ll have to use a plain white image.
Ken Saunders 1079 days ago
http://www.AccessFirefox.orgI have some sort of yellow flower, a something else (?!?), and some Elephant Ears (some are diseased looking) against a nearly black background. It’s hideous.
I wasn’t even aware of the “Change background image” link/option because I had the page zoomed to 200% (which I typically do) and since the page is so poorly coded, it doesn’t scale well at all or provide scroll bars when zoomed in.
In fact, for a high tech company wanting to brag about their implementations of HTML5,
(35) “Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!”
(http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A//www.google.com/)
The bgcolor attribute on the body element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.
The text attribute on the body element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.
The link attribute on the body element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.
The vlink attribute on the body element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.
<body bgcolor=#ffffff text=#000000 link=#0000cc vlink=#551a8b alink=#ff0000
If today was the first of April, then I'd say that's just Google being Google.
This is an embarrassment. Or it should be.
To be honest though, I rarely visit Google's homepage (unless it's a holiday or special occasion, event, etc). I hit Ctrl+K in Firefox, enter my query and go, but most other Google users use the home page.
Big fail for big G.
Intern 1079 days ago
http://www.thepossibilitiesareendless.com/Google, a work of art?
http://www.thepossibilitiesareendless.com/post/683349732/google-a-work-of-art
Amanda Davie 1079 days ago
http://www.reformdigital.comI get some grey / white flouncy flowers with a black background.
It’s a bit like being in a Tim Burton film!
James 1079 days ago
“Thanks for sharing your concerns with us. As you noticed, Google’s homepage has a series of photos on it to celebrate our new Change background image link. Please be assured these images will only be displayed today, and the homepage will return to its regular white background tomorrow.”
From: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=52d49a85dcfbdb9f&hl=en
Martin 1079 days ago
Hey Rory!
Just use https://www.google.com — Google’s ‘https department’ is kind of slow in introducing ‘new’ features, so you get a nice white background in there.
Jim Rudnick 1079 days ago
http://www.canuckseo.comOver here in google.ca land….we got a desert, eh! And I just quick blogged on same too…
Jim
Marchamont 1079 days ago
I have sunflowers – and a headache.
Mel Carson 1079 days ago
http://www.melcarson.comI added my own background http://twitpic.com/1vhhut
rory 1079 days ago
There’s always one HAHA
Arjun Sandhu 1079 days ago
http://www.modulussystems.comGoogle stood out for its simplicity – a no nonsense one line search text box.
First it was the change in search options, which now fill up one fifth of my screen and only make the whole search experience more confusing for the non-IT savvy general public. It used to be v cool with a little “search options” link.
And now you have a bing clone (only, Bing does better images) – WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU GOOGLE!?
Ray Addison 1078 days ago
One word: Gads. There’s a reason we all use Google so much, and it isn’t garish background images.
Jorgen Sundberg 1078 days ago
http://jorgensundberg.netI wonder how much the big G spend on those background images and variations of their logotype…
Carl Eisenstein 1076 days ago
http://www.scanalarm.com/Thank goodness we’re back to normal now – it seems Google has got into the habit these days of forcing experimental features on people without giving them the option of opting out.
Andrew@BloggingGuide 1072 days ago
http://webuildyourblog.comI agree with Carl, why do they have to do that? Are we guinea pigs? Just askin’ ……
Chi Aristo 1070 days ago
http://www.dermisil.co.ukYeah, it wasn’t a surprise to see them nix the scheme so quickly. I never had to deal with it (I have an iGoogle homepage), but the screenshots tell the story.
Nicola Connolly 1059 days ago
http://www.crearecommunications.co.ukTo begin with I thought somebody had been playing around with my machine! Google seems to get away with things like this rather easily… there’s nothing wrong with experimenting though… but I do think they need to ensure they keep their standards high. Simple things like readability, usability, validity… should surely be a must?
Ken the tech 1058 days ago
http://www.kensfi.comhehe, I liked the changed. Too bad it was on for such a short time