Google So Similar Bing?

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine more or less well-known by one feature that displays various images on their home page, every time you come to their homepage before you do a search would be served by the cool pictures that adorned most of their home areas.

Compare with Google is famous for its plain view their homepage, predominantly white, in addition to the search option will be present when you move your cursor. Well, today Google launched a feature that will change all that.

Google launched a feature that allows you to personalize the home page of Google Search to replace the plain white background that we usually see with the photo or image you like.

Google users can select a photo or image from their personal computer, from your Picasa album, if you have an account on Google’s photo service, or you can also use the images contained in the public gallery belonging Picasa.

Options to change the look of Google’s homepage will be in the lower left corner of Google.com. But for us who are in Indonesia, this feature can not be enjoyed, Google will soon provide this feature for users in the U.S. in the next few days, after which the new roll-out to users around the world.

The difference is pretty clear with Bing, Bing photos or images can not be altered or personalized by the user (you can just replace the images that have been provided by Bing), while the new feature from Google is, as described on their blog, is one of the services emphasis on personalization, so the user can choose whether they still want to enjoy the classic look of Google.com or try to customize a search page with a collection of their favorite photos or images.

Personalization features from Google actually have that we can enjoy in many other Google services, such as Chrome, iGoogle, and Google Mail, while the plain look of Google.com that such a design is ‘sacred’ which is characteristic of Google.

However, I myself was quite excited to wait for this feature I can use, although I am not sure if I will survive with or continue to use the photo display plain view, because Google Search is solely about the search, not about personalization, as opposed to iGoogle or Gmail. In addition, Google also does not give detailed explanations of the size of images that can be used as background in order to perform optimally, and whether the photos from the web can only be taken from Picasa alone or can be of other service providers such as web albums, Flickr.

How about you, whether you’re just like me, quite excited waiting for this feature, or this is an unpopular move from Google who are used to smooth and minimalist look? Come share your opinion on the comments field.

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