Tell them all "just go away"

[venta]

Dear Google,

It's not April 1st, y'know.

Cheers,

Venta

Comments

[ar-boblad.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? I can't disable this without being perma-logged in to Google? But I can change other settings like number of results per page? Gah!

[venta.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that: you can't disable it.

Even if you're logged in.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

But you can choose a plain light grey background (see towards the end of 'Editors' picks' in the selection box). We shouldn't have to do that at all, of course, but with any luck if Google realise that that is what everyone is doing, they will stop being such blethering idiots.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Where by 'disable' you mean 'set a background image dull enough not to hurt'?

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Type google.co.uk into your browser.

Cower in terror.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Why am I supposed to be scared by a pond? It's pretty.

[lnr]

I don't see anything obviously different. Would you care to expand?

Or is it that I'm logged into gmail so not seeing whatever it is? I don't spot anything if I log out though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Weird. Have you been to google.co.uk lately ? It's gone all hideous. If it hasn't gone hideous for you, I want to knwo how you did it!

[simont]

The Google front page is displaying large and colourful background images in place of the usual low-bandwidth plain white background.

The image fades in over the first second or so for me, so it's possible there's some sort of Javascript causing it; do you have anything disabled in your browser that might affect that?

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

The classic home as opposed to igoogle has a huge horrible image behind it, not the lovely white background.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Eh? (I still view Google through the filter of the Firefox Google homepage.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

See thread above, or go direct to google.co.uk :)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Unrelated to this discussion, but was that you I saw in a recent issue of Harker?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Who still looks at the Google home page? Search = CTRL-K, type search term, RET.

[lnr]

There is that, yes. Or using the search box at the top of the browser.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Like I said above, not me. It's the boneheaded stupidity of Google's decision that affronted me.

[metame.livejournal.com]

ooh, thanks for the shortcut. You'll save me literally minutes over the next few years...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Ctrl-K being a feature of what? I've just tried it (Firefox 3.6.3, Windows) and it did nothing whatsoever.

(I frequently look at the Google homepage, since I <3 'Advanced Search'.)

[ar-boblad.livejournal.com]

I look at the Google home page often, because it's my home page. Nice low bandwidth, with a clean page look and some of the time it's just what I want. Or at least those were my reasons for the last few years up until yesterday, if this weren't temporary I'd probably home page to somewhere else.

PS: Dear LJ spellchecker, when I typed yeterday I meant yesterday, well done for suggesting that first. But why did you think I could possibly have meant Darda?

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

It doesn't appear if you use Opera... so far.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's a surprise; if you've definitely got Javascript on, then I'm quite puzzled why Opera wouldn't show it.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

As I use http://www.google.com/ncr in order to avoid Google's forced regionalising, I'm spared the pretty pictures.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

There is a little "change background image" link, though, so you may not be safe for long.

I guess this is part of an ongoing project by both Bing and Google to become completely indistinguishable. I'm slightly surprised that Google consider that a win, but apparently so, since their search results layout change a couple of weeks ago also made them look a bit more like Bing.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

It's gone!