Google springs new look — a la Bing?
Google's bound to boggle some minds today.
UPDATE: For latest, see "Google Undoes Homepage Redo," also linked at right. The version below was posted Thursday morning.
Google's bound to boggle some minds today.
Gone is that familiar clean, white home page.
A colorful photographic image is plastered across the background instead - a la Microsoft's year-old search engine Bing.
Don't like that particular picture? You have lots of options - except for one. You can choose from a gallery of alternate images. You can log in and upload your own photo, using a new feature introduced last week.
But want the old logo on a white page back?
Good luck finding a way to do that.
At least for today. Maybe.
"We'll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours," declared the Official Google Blog at 9:07 Wednesday night.
But does that time span just refer to the first set of images - from "well-known artists, sculptors and photographers" such Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma, Kwon, Ki-soo and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic"?
Or will the plain white background return tomorrow?
Many people apparently hope so.
"How do you turn this garbage off with-out signing in and getting everything you do tracked. Guess it is time to find a new search eng," comments "Hate it A lot" at tech-news site sevensidedcube.net.
Well, you can log in, select "Editor's picks" and scroll all the way to the bottom to find "White."
But choosing that gives you a ghostly result: a white background with a faintly outlined pale-gray logo.
Bing's photo background, which changes every day, includes "special hidden hotspots" - popup blurbs with links to additional information.
Google's new photo option doesn't imitate that feature.
Attempts to get official clarification from Google were initially unsuccessful.