Google background image Clones Bing IMOTD Feature

[Drag_Racer]

All of a sudden 5 minutes ago I am forced to view some random background image on Google's homepage. I don't want it. I got to settings and no options there. I click 'Change Background Image' and no option to turn it off. I follow the help link and they tell me to click on 'Remove Background Image'. This does not exsist until I choose a background image. So I do and remove it. The background returns to the random image I don't want in the first place.

Last mistake, I'm now a Bing user.

Tech Crunch:
[techcrunch.com...]

Google Blog Post:
[googleblog.blogspot.com...]

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:52 am (utc) on Jun 10, 2010]
[edit reason] added links [/edit]

[J_RaD]

I don't buy into one single line of the "Google sucks

you haven't used adwords have you?

[TheMadScientist]

Yeah, they don't get an 'atta boy' from me when they went and copied (poorly) what someone else was doing (again), but I guess maybe I should let down a bit since that's what they're built on...

AdSense / AdWords? Cost them a $Bil because they stole the idea.
YouTube? One huge copyright infringement lawsuit in the works.
Results Pages? Yahoo! probably doesn't mind the similarities.
Home Page? I guess since Bing isn't the best long-tail search engine they don't deserve any credit whatsoever for their professional, unique, 'clean' look and feel, and besides, mimicry is the highest form of flattery, or so I've heard...
Buzz? Hmmmm... FaceBook or Twitter anyone?

And the list goes on...

If anyone else copies as much as they do they say the site doesn't rank because it's not very good or it's duplicate content, but when they do it we should give them some credit or something? I don't care what their results are like WRT the rest of the things they do, I'll give credit where it's due, and they do a great job with their search algo, but beyond ordering information their 'ingenuity' seems to come from other's ideas, often...

It really just gets old listening to (or seeing) them do the 'hey look at what we did' stuff when all they did was copy someone else or steal their idea or build something on their content... The search engine is amazing, but the site and some of the things they do and try to make sound / look original get on my nerves a bit.

[DeVille]

All the new search is doing is pushing news paper sites. Hmm not evil huh? Too much of a change for any user. Here comes Bing!

[StoutFiles]

Ahh, the images are back again!

The good news is they learned their lesson. They have a button to remove the background image, logged in or not.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

you haven't used adwords have you?

Lol, I have no comeback for that... it's undeniably accurate (I have used adwords but I'm referring to what you're implying). Darned you!

As long as it's optional the images don't affect me one way or the other, or perhaps they affect me exactly how I want them to, and that's how it should be. Hope nobody took my strong pro-Google comments to heart, I got all riled (not really) with the article title :-)

[J_RaD]

^ wonder on over to adcenter for your breath of fresh air, along with much better converting traffic.

along with live helpful very awesome customer service
no quality score driving up your ad prices
and no sudden account lockage for NO REASON AT ALL.

that and all the other 1,000's of reasons goog adwords is a huge PITA headache.

goog adwords could be so great! if they just lost the goog part.

[WolfLover]

Strange, I don't see anything different other than the normal white background.

[shri]

>> Strange, I don't see anything different other than the normal white background.

They're sniffing browser UAs. A number of browsers / versions are excluded.

[graeme_p]

Background images have disappeared for me.

I cannot understand the thinking of people who are waying they are switching to Bing because they do not like background images. Because Bing looks exactly like a classic simple search engine?

[Emilio]

No more background image for me.

[jkovar]

Only happened to me while using Firefox. I don't get any sort of automated background image in Opera or Chrome and Opera doesn't even show the "Change Background" link.

[Stefan]

Strange, I don't see anything different other than the normal white background.

Neither did I, but saw it referred to on a lot of News sites. I'm using FF 1.5 with NoScript (yeah, I know, it's very outdated, but 2 and above won't work with WinMe, which is what I have on the internet connecton machine). I assumed it was some javascript thing. Wasn't, eh?

[frontpage]

Marissa Mayer, the executive in charge of search products and user experience: "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."

Google has abandoned the 'Bing'-like homepage because it's engineers could not successfully add a link to the page explaining it.

Bravo Sierra.