Do Not Want!

Is it April 1st, again?

Google is apparently “experimenting and implementing lot of user interface ideas from Bing search“, including having background images on their search home page. Apparently last night was Google.ca’s turn to get Binged up. Google is “excited to announce that this feature is now available internationally. [They] hope you enjoy the new artist collection and making Google feel more like your own!”

The problem with this particular feature is that you can’t turn it off on Google.ca. If you are logged into your Google account, you have the ability to change the picture to something else; but if you are not logged in, you’re stuck with whatever random picture Google pulls out of its hat. And you can’t pick “none” in either case.

Google.com appears to have no image by default (if you’re not logged in), and gives you the option to “Remove background image” if you’re logged in, but Google.ca doesn’t. Hopefully that’s just a temporary glitch. In the mean time, I guess I’m going back to using Google.com.