The Google home page is the web’s most classic example of the power of clean simplicity, but today the company announced that it’s time for a change. Users will now be allowed to upload their own photo to illustrate the background of Google.com
The feature will be rolled out over the next few days and will appear via a link in the bottom left corner of the home page. What percentage of people will choose to abandon the old, blank Google page? What will you put on yours? Was this inspired by Bing? Small changes to big things can yield a whole lot of questions.
Above: One example provided by Google.
It’s pretty remarkable, considering how incredibly controlled Google has always been about its home page, that it would let users personalize its design. The company once famously debated at length between 41 different shades of blue to use on the home page, carefully watching the data to see which got more clicks. Now users can put any crazy picture on that page that they want? Now working at Twitter, Google’s very first lead designer Douglas Bowman’s head must have just exploded.
