They had to respond to Bing eventually, and today is the day. Starting this afternoon, and rolling out over the next few days Google is releasing the ability around the US and the world to upload a custom image as the background of your Google.com.
Might that not clutter and stain the wonderfully minimalistic Google.com that we all know and love? That depends on what image you select, but the option to do so will soon be yours. Google will let you use an image from your computer, from Picasa, or from a library that they have selected.
Head to Google.com and look in the lower left hand portion of your screen. If you see an option to change your background image, congratulations, you are among the first in the world to be able to do so. If not, check back and give it a try when the option appears.
Google’s official comments on roll out are as follows:
We are beginning to roll out this new feature to users in the U.S. over the next few days, so if you don’t see a link in the lower left-hand corner of Google.com now, check back soon. For those of you outside of the U.S., you can expect to see this new feature in the coming days as we roll it out internationally to offer similar, consistent experiences globally.
If you want to go the exact opposite direction you can do what some people have been enjoying for some time and host your own insanely minimal version of Google.com on a personal server. Really, we mean minimal. Take a look at this:
But if you want to enjoy the new Google offering, you can do so. This is an example of what it can look like:
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