Turns out Google search users like all the white space. Google found this out over the course of the week, when their experiment to add large photos to the search page was answered by a sudden surge in the search term “remove google background”. When it became the seventh most popular search in the United States on their Google Trends tool, they got the picture (Get it? Picture?) with internet speed.
I guess if people wanted photos, they’d be using Bing. Of course Google wanted to one-up Bing by letting users choose their own photos – either from those provided by Google or from their own files – but this message didn’t make it out to the public, who only saw Google’s sample photos without an explanation. It might have been cool, if it weren’t so instantly hated. It’s too bad, it seems like they worked hard to make people happy.
Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, wrote on the Google Blog, “We’ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage.” Awww….that’s so nice!
She added later, “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.”
Tags: Google, Internet Speed