Imposed was a bad idea, but I like the idea and picked a different one from the gallery than the imposed.

K.I.S.S.

It felt totally Bing. First time I've noticed Google imitating Microsoft.

people are such whiners.jeez.

Google should imitate MS and make Gmail as fast as Hotmail.

Wow.. is the king slipping?

Taking away that clean home page is like McDonalds no longer selling fries.

I thought it look crappy and totally forgot about the google mission of simplicity…. following the footsteps of MSFT

My background is still up.

I like the new backgrounds.

I actually thought those hippos were pretty adorable. But that's just me…apparently.

nice joke, bro

My background is still there too.. Are they "incrementally" removing the "feature"?

It would appear that their imitation of Bing is going as well as their imitation of iOS…

I miss the old Google… where's the innovation?

This was a genius move by Google. In essence, what they did today was remind people of the value of their brand over Bing. People screaming and pulling their hair out just went to show everyone that what makes Google special and user-friendly isn't the flashy graphics, it's the simple way it provides information.

Excellent move, Google. Excellent.

Marissa Mayer is terrible. She's the reason Google will never be an Apple in when it comes to design and interface.

I don't actually understand why people go to the google homepage. Why not just search from your browser's toolbar?

That said, wow, what a lot of fuss made over such a trivial thing. "Forget that thar oil spill… I've got me a pitcher on mah googler! Someone gots ta die!"

People in the internet don't like change (even a temporary one evidentially).

I really think Google may can try 3D on their homepage. Do something new!

"New Coke" all over again..

If I were Eric Schmidt heads would be rolling for this "experiment".

Why does anyone go to the Google homepage? Don't all browsers offer a search toolbar?

THANK GOD. It's fine as an *option* but the fact that they forced everyone to have one suddenly, without being able to turn it off, drove me nuts. The background images on bing work, because they're smaller and they add a bit of flair. But on Google, they made them full screen, which didn't work at all. It was just extremely irritating.

It wasn't the addition of the images that pissed people off (though I'm sure it annoyed a lot of people) it was the inability to simply turn it off.

This doesn't have anything to do with people on the internet disliking change. In fact it's the opposite. People were frustrated with the inability to change the homepage back to one that didn't include a 270kb image.

The fact that there is rarely an uproar when Google changes its logo shows that people can accept change – when it isn't for the worse.

It was extremely bad, their site isnt designed for it and doesnt take into effect text colors or anything. It was stupid, and they got their ass handed to them.

worse yet, I still a) open a new tab b) click on address bar c) type in "www.google.com" d) search

It's crazy.. but I still type in all those characters every time.

Yah… la.me

Ignoring the fact that this is a complete rip of Bing, who the hell visits the Google homepage? Every web browser I know has a box for searching built right in.

They've also aped Bing on the mapping front, too.

My thoughts exactly! I mean look at how much people are talking about Google over a silly little thing. Google is the shit!

It could've worked out OK, except they went about the images wrong. In order to pull it off, they would have had to change the Google Doodle to something that provided contrast to the image. It might have also helped if the image had also been arranged a little differently, i.e., the search box in a non-busy part of the screen.

don't ya remember the side menu recently added which adds redundancy? you can count that as twice.

If I want tacky, distracting background images, I'll start using Bing. If I want a service that gets out of my way and gives me the search results that I'm looking for, I'll continue using Google. Google forcing a background image does nothing to promote better search. Glad they killed it early, I have no interest in seeing big totally random images when I'm trying to quickly find information.

Yeah, because all those people complaining about Google's homepage background image should be fixing that oil spill!!! No wonder it's still a problem, the Internet masses are too busy complaining about background images!

Nice one to see google copying microsoft for a change

-Sent via TechCrunch App

Agreed. So sick of these people. There are bigger issues in the world to deal with and they whine about a change to a site that they DO NOT OWN and provides a FREE service? Give me a break.

Use iGoogle with custom header. Why background images?

"they got their ass handed to them"……that would make twice this week………..(from both major competitors)

If you have been using the https google then you probably haven't seen it. This move of Google has an ulterior motive, obviously. — Too bad the netizens didn't like it. I'd rather prefer those good ole doodles before, that's really special..

Yeah, the old "conspiracy theory angle". You know you're on top when people are rationalizing your mistakes in your favor!

Their next genius move is to add banner ads to Gmail to remind people how awesome it is that they don't have banner ads. I suspect they take them down a few hours later and are then lauded for listening to their customers. Brilliant.

Oh my fuck.

She has no sense of aesthetic. I mean, have you seen how she dresses?

Someone as supposedly smart as Marissa should know that just because many people protest doesn;t mean most people don;t like it. Unhappy people are more likely to complain that happy people. So if 20% of people hated the new look, and 80% liked it, the unhappy 20% are the ones who take to Twitter and blogs to complain. Someone then says, 'most people don't like it.' Not true- the complainers are rarely representative of the majority, because of the silent majority.

I liked it…just wish I could find that hippo pic to use as my desktop background as well.

Actually it just shows that Google is so bad at UI they can't even rip-off Bing.

"Why put picture in a small part of screen with backgrounds and font colors taken into account, let's just max it out".

The best move would be to nuke repetitive menus, throw out playdoh "3D" effect on logo and just keep it clean and easy (maybe do a font face-lift). But that probably won't happen for next 4-5 years or so.
At least "seasonal" logos are sometimes neat or entertaining

Yep. Terrible usability. Couldn't read the white text links at all on these images. Full screen imagery is just WRONG. Bing got it right with fixed width/height imagery. Google's images have JPG artifacts everywhere and have been implemented so poorly. Instead they should have done some subtle transparencies to make the text much more readable and the images should be fixed width / height.

This is good promotion for Bing by Google. I went to check out their site after reading all the articles that Google copied them.

Have you tried the new hotmail? It's pretty slick…

Hah, they should've held out for the full duration – people always complain about change, as long as it was removed after 24 hours it would of been fine.

No. Not a conspiracy theory. It's marketing. It's not earth-shattering great news, or a new product. But keeping the word Google in our minds instead of Apple, or Microsoft is a great thing. Bad news is news, nonetheless.

Heck, at least for today, I'd rather be Google and have this snafu, than Apple with the iPad breach, that''s for sure!

I think the funniest part of this little fiasco is Mayer claiming to take this down early due to a "bug". Why not just own up to the fact that you made a bad call and take responsibility for it? CYA much?

You mean the competitor that's just playing catch up? I didn't see any asses being handed.

@Kam – the hippo background is at: http://www.google.co.uk/images/background/p5.jpg
I don't know for how much longer though.

if (!likedbyblogs || !likedbymsm || prodbandwidth > avgbandwidth * 1.025 || wefeelstupid || prodbandwidth < avgbandwidth * 0.075) { promotion(); } else { newfeature(); };

What upset people is that there was no option to keep the old page, worse thing since new Coke.

hmm…WWSJD?
I know…a background on Iphones…
http://www.witstroll.wordpress.comhmm...

Why is google so insistent on force feeding new features down our throat?
Didn't they learn anything from google buzz incident?

Same here. I think Google got a little too mesmerized by Apple in the past few years and envious too. It seems they forgot they should be the ones innovating and making other people following them.

Now they just try to copy other competitor's "good" features and trying to make them "better" or more "open" – as opposed to focusing on innovating.

The background feature was the only reason I went to bing, cause I thought it was cool. Glad Google has it now.

But… none for opera browser! :(

Google is a great company, and it's good to see they are attempting to change things in an evolutionary mindset. This may have not been the best idea, but it opened up doors to other advancements.

Many stock investors could use a similar inspirational website and I have found that inspiration for myself, and hopefully for other traders at http://invetrics.com/

It is a great website with free stock trading signals updated daily and is up more than an incredible 80% for the year! It has already earned me several thousands of dollars and more to come! Make sure you check it out!

I liked it better when big companies didn't care what its customers thought.

it was horrid. they just jammed a big ole image on the screen. at least Bing has some logical design elements to go with it.

I see nothing at all :p

the new hotmail is actually just as fast as gmail, if not faster. And it doesnt take as long to load up. Please get out of the 90's already. Thanks.

Ironically, not having the ability to turn off the background image annoyed me to the point that I used Bing as my homepage at work today.

I agree.

I think this was a calculated move on Google's part to discredit an identifiable Bing's feature – "See most people hate it". Sort of like Mercedes designing the worst cup holders or manual transmissions possible in a car to say – "see no one needs cup holders or manual transmissions".

Google is a company that does selective productive testing of even what shade of blue or gray an icon or a piece of text should be before releasing it to public so this type of change is not something Google would do without a purpose in mind.

Clever PR.

To all the so-called experts who keep asking 'why go to Google's page when there's a search box in every browser?"
The simple answer is: Google's home search page loads quickly, and is 'set' as the 'home page' on millions of folks browsers, so that, when one 'clicks' to start their browser… TaDaa.. Googles page appears- quickly, comfortingly always the same, ready to search. Not rocket science, just simple consistency.

No
the king did not slipped
The king is naked.

Yeah I HATE that left side menu on google. Absolutely hate it. When BING first came out I used it but the side menu was driving me crazy so I switched back to google…now that google has it..I can't seem to find a search engine that doesn't have it (ask.com, yahoo, bing, google…altavista (av.com and dogpile.com) still doesn't have it though lol). I know there is a plugin for chrome that removes it but the plug-in is not perfect.

I've gotta say, it really irritated me that Google looked like Bing. I hate Bing, and I'm glad Google gave me my simple classic background back. Google, we love you just the way you are.

Why is everyone saying they copied bing when Ask.com had it before bing. So is Google copying bing who copied Ask.com?

Google homepage has link to change background image at bottom left corner but is is not working. Let's see when it will work and what Google offers…

Surprise me Google…

Why use google as your homepage when there's something like favetop with direct site search?

Some people do use Google's home page to do things other than search! You can't login to Adsense via a search facility in a browser toolbar for instance….

Too bad. It makes Internet a more beautiful place. Look at the guys from Wetransfer.com. They know how it's done!

People don't do well with change. Not surprised that there was a huge revolt against it.

Another great stuff from google :)
But I rather not to use the background, coz the connection in my place is rather slow..

Seems they have changed something in the code, since the wallpapers cannot be downloaded as they could yesterday, I was plannig even to make a script that will get all the wallpapers for each day.

My god, what's wrong with everyone? It's a goddamn picture, not the end of the world. jeez

ha ha so funny. They should have planed it well.

tool.

BING = Because It's Not Google

> Users predictably went nuts…

Hey Jason, you appear to have used the word 'users' by mistake, where you quite clearly meant 'Wankers'.

They're the same people who care about a changed background. QED.

People like experimenting. but it's quietly like following the foot steps of MS (Bing). As a Google fan, I request Google to innovate not to imitate…

Oh stop whining aeontriad.

Wow, are you new to the tech world? Copy and improve has been the whole premise since the 1950's.

Google just jumped the shark. hee hee hee

agreed. honestly thats ugly.

Interesting article… Love reading it!
used cars in Arizona

I think Google may be considering removing the new feature. It may be off for you but it's on for me. Like, it stayed for two days already.

Sorry, but I ended up liking it after experimenting with a few of my own resized images. The results were disappointing until switching over and messing around with the ones being offered by the "professionals"; it was unintentionally a learning experience for understanding what's needed for making a decent background–while continuing to maintain an elegant pleasant simplicity to the search page design.

However, Google not following through with their plan just a few hours short of their original goal seemed out of character the company's decision making process. The legitimate problems could have waited and been properly explained without having to resort to an earlier than expected shut-down. The jittery nervous reaction to public opinion felt like a gambler canceling a bet made with scared money. It was flaky.

I prefer google.. it helps me a lot

I like the new background feature and still have it activated now. xD

Poor Google. It seems that whenever they're trying to adapt something innovative and helpful for users, they always get slapped in the face. When Apple plays both sides of that card they always get away with it.

If you didnt like the image did you have to have one?? I dont know because I loved them and always was changing mine and had it up. You can make some people happy some of the time, but not everybody happy all of the time, its amazing what people complain about. But if they didnt then I wouldnt have somone to laugh about i guess!

I much prefer Gazoomy (http://www.gazoomy.com). I like how you can move the search bar… and that's just for starters!!