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Google Introduces, Then Scraps, Bing-Style Background Images

Posted by timothy on from the go-beyond-your-imitations dept.

NIN1385 writes "Google has scrapped the now infamous background image option on its homepage. After 14 hours of a scheduled 24-hour experiment to see how people liked (or disliked) the new homepage layout, the company must have found out it was very disliked. I guess the fact that 'remove Google background' was the seventh most searched for phrase today might have had something to do with it."

37 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. Opera users didnt have a problem by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google was browser sniffing again and didnt offer this "feature" to Opera users (who could get it to work simply by identifying as any of the supported browsers,) Opera users rejoiced.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
    1. Re:Opera users didnt have a problem by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Informative

      My main issue (Firefox 3.6) was I couldn't get rid of the damn thing, or change images. Clicking "Change Background Image" did nothing. Clicking their main link which was supposed to tell me more about it, took me right back to the homepage. Useless.

      It might've been okay if they had put a faded pillar in the center of the screen, so all the text didn't get washed out. Oh, and had options that did something.

    2. Re:Opera users didnt have a problem by Flipao · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Funnily enough email addresses with the word spam on them get no spam at all, the word is stripped by pretty much every sniffer out there :)

    3. Re:Opera users didnt have a problem by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Informative

      Going to the homepage to search is very useful since you can now use https://www.google.com./ That way, if someone is sniffing your connection to see what you're googling (such as your employer), they won't be able to see.

    4. Re:Opera users didnt have a problem by shiftless · · Score: 4, Funny

      Do I even want to know what the background in question looked like? I bet I don't. In fact, here's me explicitly *not* even asking. Whatever it was, I'm glad I missed it.

      It was some hot ass chick bent over a bike getting it from the biker. It's a good thing you missed it, it was pretty sinful.

  2. I still see the link by iamapizza · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The feature still seems to be available - so you can set an image if you want, but I guess they won't be providing you with one of their own picked images as a default.

    --
    Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
    1. Re:I still see the link by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"

      The google homepage was perfect, practically from it's inception, up to a few years ago.
      Recent experiments have made me switch from a search engine homepage, to the firefox search bar. Since the firefox bar is a list, it also encourages me to shop around for results.

  3. Thanks god. by Cornwallis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now if only they'd get rid of that awful text fading in. What's that about?

    1. Re:Thanks god. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Now if only they'd get rid of that awful text fading in. What's that about?

      So stop running their JavaScript by default. NoScript works well for this purpose. Google.com works perfectly well without JS of any kind. If you use Gmail you'll need to allow JS from gmail.com but as gmail.com != google.com you can be selective here.

    2. Re:Thanks god. by thms · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is a reference to their early days. Back when Altavista & Co. were the dominant search engines they had incredibly cluttered interfaces, they were more like web portals.

      Then Google came along with just a logo, an input field and two buttons. And of course an awesome search algorithm. Not showing the inevitable clutter that has crept in for the first few seconds is their way of having and eating the purity cake.

    3. Re:Thanks god. by Radish03 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not necessarily hidden for just the first few seconds. It's based on mouse movement. If you mouse over the page, the text fades in. If you just open the site, the search box has an active cursor, so you type your query, hit enter, and you're off without ever seeing any of the clutter they've added.

    4. Re:Thanks god. by quantumplacet · · Score: 4, Informative

      except once you log into gmail.com you wind up in mail.google.com, and all the scripts for gmail are served up from that domain.

  4. There is a reason... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a reason why few people use Bing, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, etc. if Google wants to branch out in different directions, do it under a different banner other than Google search.

    People like the way Google is/was, if they didn't, there would be a flood of people going to Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and all the other search engines. Because there isn't, you can pretty easily realize that people like the way Google is.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:There is a reason... by quantumplacet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's a pretty false dichotomy. Yes, the majority of people do seem to like Google better than they like Bing, Yahoo etc. But that doesn't mean all those people think everything Google does is perfect and they never want anything changed or have any new features added. Ultimately, if Google took your advice and search development became completely stagnant, then eventually the other search providers would improve over time and overtake Google.

    2. Re:There is a reason... by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Put it this way: today's experiment was New Coke. When you're the number 1 brand, it's stupid to make your product taste more like the number 2 brand. I'm baffled why Google even tried this.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  5. Microsoft Responds by eihab · · Score: 4, Funny

    There were also a couple of snarky tweets from Microsoft regarding the "bing-style" backgrounds.

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    If you can't mod them join them.
    1. Re:Microsoft Responds by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Haha, yeah, I'm sure MS if gloating about how Google copied them. On the other hand, the response to the 'Bing' flavored Google was overwhelmingly negative, which can't make them feel too good. Especially since a lot of the comments that I saw were along the lines of "If I wanted this crap I would go use Bing".

  6. Fire that marketroid! by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Informative
    You might think a background image is nothing worth getting in a huge flap over, but let me explain why this experiment was so stupid.

    First, Google seems to have forgotten the early days of the search engine wars in which Yahoo, Excite, et al vied for the most user-hostile, craptacular portal landing pages. I believe it was primarily their choice of a minimal utilitarian design that made people flock to Google, and the quality of the search results, good as they were, was a distant secondary factor among typical users.

    Secondly, the actual execution of this feature was terrible. Not only were the images bright, garish, and distracting, but there was NO option to turn it off. Sure if you spent a few minutes digging you could find the "editor's choice" images, and if you scrolled all the way down to the bottom you could find white. But then if you picked that, you would get white text on a white background. Brilliant.

    Google has said in the past that they use an empirical, incremental approach to UI design where user actions are studied and these guide decisions down to the level of how many pixels to make a line or what font size to use. Some have rightly pointed out that this will cause you to get stuck on local maxima and you need to have a methodology that allows for some creative design. But forcing such a butt ugly intrusion on all users for the purposes of a trial is ridiculous. If they really wanted to do a trial they could have simply served this to, say, 1 in 10,000 users (based on IP+useragent hash, for example) and got the exact same information.

    No, this could only have been the brainchild of a marketroid who thought it would be necessary to "make a splash" and get some "buzz" going. Well congratulations, you got your feedback and the answer is a resounding "fuck off". Google has officially run out of ideas if this is the best they can come up with.

    1. Re:Fire that marketroid! by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google seems to have forgotten the early days of the search engine wars in which Yahoo, Excite, et al vied for the most user-hostile, craptacular portal landing pages. I believe it was primarily their choice of a minimal utilitarian design that made people flock to Google, and the quality of the search results, good as they were, was a distant secondary factor among typical users.
      [...]
      Google has officially run out of ideas if this is the best they can come up with.

      Good. Maybe without ideas they'll stagnate and, as a result, remain popular.

    2. Re:Fire that marketroid! by Linker3000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      ..Thirdly, on train with a laptop with a 3G dongle it was f*king awful-to-impossible to load and eat up my data allowance.

      The person or people at Google eho thought this was a good idea should be given a severe ass-kicking, with the video of the event posted on Youtube.

      --
      AT&ROFLMAO
    3. Re:Fire that marketroid! by lgw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, they should make a 20MB video of that person getting an ass kicking the new default background on Google!

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  7. Didn't even notice by by+(1706743) · · Score: 5, Funny

    I only use the Pac-Man page.

  8. Not here by Fnkmaster · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just checked and Google.com still shows a "Change Background Image" link in the lower left corner, so it looks more like it's still an option, they just realized they confused people by defaulting it to on for a few hours.

    Anyway, it's just an option now. Nobody's forcing you to use it. I suspect the Slashdot crowd keeps it pretty real on the "give me a plain white background or give me death" tip, but a lot of people like this sort of silly eye candy.

    Anybody else remember back when we all switched to using Google *because* of the plain white background and simple layout?

  9. iGoogle by somaTh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Honestly, I haven't seen the main Google page in a while. Had no one sent me the link, I would've missed Pac-Man day.

    --
    Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
  10. Resistance to change by dward90 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google is finding out again (and has found out before) that, because they are the default search engine for so many people, they can't really make large interface changes. I recall reading that they would like to remove the "I'm feeling lucky" button (because no one uses it), but they can't. Users simply can't handle large changes. This is a sad truth of many consumers, especially in computers: change of any kind prohibits many users from functioning, even when that change would have almost no impact on them.

    --
    My other sig is clever.
    1. Re:Resistance to change by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Given that so many users use the Google search box as an address bar, I'm amazed that they manage to get as far as opening up their browser without accidentally electrocuting themselves.

    2. Re:Resistance to change by sootman · · Score: 5, Funny

      > I recall reading that they would like to remove the "I'm feeling lucky"
      > button (because no one uses it), but they can't. Users simply can't
      > handle large changes.

      Well that's an easy one to handle. Just remove it gradually. Every week, take off 1 letter.

      I'm Feeling Lucky
      I'm Feeling Luck
      I'm Feeling Luc
      I'm Feeling Lu
      I'm Feeling L
      etc.

      In just a few short months the button will be worn down to a nub and can then be safely removed without causing stress for users.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  11. slow on uptake by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought this was just a one-day thing they were doing to show they're aware of the oilpocalypse. Bing has pretty pictures but I don't actually use it for anything. As Stephen Colbert said "Bing is the best search engine. I know because I googled it."

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  12. You know something has gone seriously wrong... by rm999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know something has gone seriously wrong in your company when your employees are ripping off Microsoft's ideas.

    1. Re:You know something has gone seriously wrong... by welcher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But the whole google search sidebar was ripped off from Bing and seems to be very successful. You'd be in far more trouble if you refused to consider an idea just because it came from a place you didn't like.

  13. Vocal by decipher_saint · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many, many folks (including myself) got quite vocal about it on the Google Support forums:
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/label?lid=54fe34ede196c261&hl=en

    It was entertaining to see the range of reactions during the last 12-14 hours.

    The most interesting take was from my dad who called me up and asked me if he had a virus or something, I can only imagine how most "normal" people reacted to this change today.

    --
    crazy dynamite monkey
  14. I must be the only one by Gudeldar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I must be the only person on the whole internet who didn't really care about this. Why bother visiting the Google homepage anyway? I just search from Firefox's search box.

    1. Re:I must be the only one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Google's homepage is the dial tone of the internet.

  15. no fuss google url by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&client=google-coop-np

    I use this uri no adds, no fuss, simple return of search results. The way it should be.

  16. How clever of them... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    See, it was all a plan - give us a day of "Google as Bing" and demonstrate with cold hard data that people don't like Bing's style and prefer Google. Shut up carpers among stockholders that were screaming "do something!" to respond to Bing grabbing 2 percent market share, AND wipe MS's nose it it.

    Yeah, that was the plan all along.

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    This space available.
  17. Re:Google has lost their identity by Cecil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You look at the desktop a lot? I can barely even remember what my desktop background is. I see it for about 10 seconds after a very rare reboot, while I'm waiting for various maximized applications to start.

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    Random and weird software I've written.
  18. Google already said it was an accident.... by aengblom · · Score: 5, Informative

    Update June 10, 11:31AM: 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.

    Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

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    So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number