Allowed to make Adsense Search Box valid

[RammsteinNicCage]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before and can't search for it since googlebot's been banned, so sorry if I'm rehashing old news. :(

I emailed Google and they said that I am allowed to modify the markup to make the google adsense search box valid xhtml 1.0 strict. They even gave me explicit instructions on what I can do:

unmodified

<img src="http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_25wht.gif" border="0"
alt="Google" align="middle"></img></a>
<input type="hidden" name="oe" value="ISO-8859-1"></input>

modified

<img src="http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_25wht.gif" border="0"
alt="Google" align="middle" /></a>
<input type="hidden" name="oe" value="ISO-8859-1" />

I also decided to push my luck and ask if I can use css to change colors and whatnot and they said no. :( Does anyone know if they are planning on giving us color control over the search boxes similar to what we have for the ad units/links?

Jennifer

[jomaxx]

</img>

Sweet mother of God. Was it really necessary for someone to invent this tag?

[graeme_p]

Was it really necessary for someone to invent this tag?

<img #*$! /> is valid insted of <img xxx></img>

[Chico_Loco]

You'd expect better code from what should be highly experienced people with high levels of educations.

That's the first time I've seen someone use </img> - Is there some reason why they used this that I don't know about?