Google Slapping Bing with its Own Image Personalization

Bing despite its glaring deficiencies in the search engine wars managed to score a point on their homepage against Google by featuring a different background every day. Some days the images are stunning but on some days they weren’t my cup of tea, slightly annoying.
Google is a hard competitor who decided to go after the single point advantage of Microsoft Bing’s background image by having the same concept on their homepage. The picture on the left shows you the Google homepage filled with a Mountain View picture.
I don’t like it. I liked the clean homepage. Is Google giving up their minimalist principles just to slap Microsoft Bing?
Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience, published a politically correct statement that the background image is a whole new level of user personalization to make your search experience more fun and relevant.
Personalization is for Microsoft whose search technology relies heavily on user interactions and trends while Google’s search engine is hardcore mathematical equations and kick-ass algorithms. Search homepage personalization is not their thing and while an army of developers have emulated Google’s minimalist approach, Google is now emulating Microsoft.
Google a few weeks back improved their minimalist approach by initially showing the text box upfront and having the rest of the text load at a later time. That was superb and I enjoyed the search experience because of that.
Today, Google’s homepage looks crap and I would rather have these guys bring the old homepage back and users who want an image can do so after logging in.
If Google doesn’t revert back to their minimalist homepage then I am left with no choice but to customize the background image of the Google Search Page. If I slap my Incredible Hulk desktop image on it, maybe my perspective changes.
Marissa Mayer’s blog post found here — Freeze Frame!