Google's getting B(l)ing

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/freeze-frame.html

by rottencupcakes • 16 years ago

78 51 16 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

tewks• 16 years ago

Given the fact that the company relies so heavily on data when making UI decisions, I have a feeling that Google must have some pretty convincing data that would lead them to copy bing both in search results, and now with these iGoogle options...

nfnaaron• 16 years ago

Or, they're trying to encourage you to be logged in when you search. IIUC, you won't see "your" personalized picture unless you're logged in and cookied.

SanjayU• 16 years ago

We have a winner ^

smysore• 16 years ago

I read a little while ago that Bing's numbers are holding steady (not sure if they are growing now) while other search sites are shrinking (other than Google obviously) -- guessing this has something to do with it

duck• 16 years ago

Great title!

AdamGibbins2• 16 years ago

Tweet a picture? Given up with Buzz then?

megamark16• 16 years ago

Oh snap, that's a good point. I turned off Buzz when it first came out because of all of the issues flying around and I promptly forgot about it. From time to time someone says something about Buzz and I think "oh yeah, forgot about that"

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

Fortunately google is not quite as dumb as other companies in forcing every aspect of its business to pay the "strategy tax" of supporting every other product of the business regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

shadowsun7• 16 years ago

I love the idea. I'm not sure if the implementation would be better than the current white page (I'm very easily distracted, and I sometimes spend a couple of minutes on Bing just flipping through the background photos - they're a sampling of current world affairs, if you don't know) and so I think this is a visual improvement.

That said - I may well waste more time changing my background image the way I do my wallpaper.

Raphael• 16 years ago

No dice if it removes holiday logos like iGoogle does.

staunch2• 16 years ago

They should have left this kind of thing to iGoogle I think. Even if people like it, it's going to subtly dilute their image of Google being The Dead Simple choice.

w1ntermute2• 16 years ago

How so? It's an optional feature. It's not enabled by default, so only those who want this feature will be using it.

staunch2• 16 years ago

Assume for the sake of argument that you agree it is a harmful feature for Google's image in the long term. In that case does making it an optional feature make any difference, beyond minimizing the damage?

cmelbye• 16 years ago

Bing is hardly the first search engine to use a photo as a background image. Ask and Wikia Search are two examples off the top of my head that have offered that feature as well (most likely before Bing was launched, too.)

hugh32• 16 years ago

I don't see a helluva lot of point. It seems like it's just a thumb in the eye of bing and everybody who has said "I like bing, it has pretty pictures". But it completely avoids the actual value of bing, which is to give you a new and interesting pretty picture every day. And in fact, just reading this article made me go look at bing's last few pictures.

If I want to look at one of my own pretty pictures, or some other picture I've chosen myself, I'll just make it my desktop background.

kierank2• 16 years ago

If I want to look at one of my own pretty pictures, or some other picture I've chosen myself, I'll just make it my desktop background.

One reason is that the customised background makes users feel more accustomed to the concept of a "cloud desktop".

Ygor2• 16 years ago

"... I'll just make it my desktop background."

Interesting. This is actually what first came to my mind: Google is copying the desktop? Not Bing. As many of you said, Bing isn't the first web page to put a pretty background picture (some of the first web pages were the first web pages with pretty background pictures, were they not?). And, as we concluded, the concept is different - choosing, instead of getting a random pic.

So, now you can change the "desktop background" of your google homepage - "the Internet", as often called by many people where I come from. Add some shortcuts to the picture with pretty custom icons (links), support for a clock, a calendar (widgets), a tray or a bar with quick launch and various options...

If only a browser existed that loaded automatically when you start your computer, without the need for all that "windows loading stuff"... :)

henrikhansen• 16 years ago

Chrome OS?

natmaster3• 16 years ago

I have my desktop background set to rotate on Bing's pic of the day.

hugh32• 16 years ago

Really? How did you do that?

panacea• 16 years ago

They've re-identified a niche. The "I wanna customize my shit, even if it makes it ghetto" - ala MySpace set.

(Except those users don't think they're making a mess of their ability to customize... they think they're expressing themselves, yo).

est2• 16 years ago

I like mit.edu, it has pretty pictures.

Herald_MJ• 16 years ago

You can also use a public Picasa web album - I'm sure in light of this announcement, they'll be all sorts of bing-photo-like albums appearing.

_3ex72• 16 years ago

heh... http://imgur.com/rUt1A.jpg

klenwell• 16 years ago

Is that the UCSD library?

_3ex72• 16 years ago

China Pavilion at 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

It took me a couple months of using Bing to figure this out, but if you mouse over the little copyright symbol in the bottom-right of the image, it will tell you who took the picture and what it is of.

what• 16 years ago

But it won't have the mouse overs that gives you little factlets? Does anyone know where Bing gets the images and facts for the mouse overs? Is it someone's job to put those together?

flubba• 16 years ago

It definitely looks like the mouseover content is manually inputted, but since Microsoft acquired Powerset (http://www.powerset.com) last year, they could also pull some information about topics from it.

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

Best pics don't interfere with the purpose of the page.

http://i.imgur.com/uobal.jpg

natmaster3• 16 years ago

I like this look.

est2• 16 years ago

Is there a way to use Bing background automatically for Google?

julio_the_squid• 16 years ago

Now that every browser includes a search bar next to the address input, why go to Google's home page at all? I very rarely do so.

rottencupcakes• 16 years ago

In order to develop my own opinion, I've been running a little experiment for the past week in which I switched the search box to Bing.

Basically, I have found very little difference in Google and Bing's search. They are both equally functional and fast. If anything, I've found that I have no reason to switch back to Google - Bing's daily rethemeing adds a little spark to my day.

I encourage everyone to try this for a week. You'll be amazed at how undifferentiated the two major search players truly are at search. These little user delighters are going to be a huge component in the battle for search revenue in the near future.

strebler• 16 years ago

Agreed - other than coverage and update frequency, they're very similar results. I think I actually prefer Bing overall.

robryan• 16 years ago

It's to be expected, with the public papers written on search and employees moving between them over time I'd imagine there algorithms would be quiet similar.

AdamGibbins2• 16 years ago

My search bar is set to DuckDuckGo :-)

stanleydrew• 16 years ago

Yet another step in turning the browser into an operating system -- customizable backgrounds.

moolave• 16 years ago

Just one market route to drive more users to their homepage. Definitely an optional preference.

Andi• 16 years ago

Why is this on hacker news?

ephermata• 16 years ago

My mother regularly tells me how much she loves the Bing photos and how she's looking forward to "what will they put up next." She was asking yesterday how long it would be before Google did the same. Now we know...

pkaler• 16 years ago

New Google is the new New Coke. I guess that makes Bing Pepsi.

sswam• 16 years ago

Well, the point is that now I can have a hubble deep field image as my background for google search, which is a enough reason for me to stay logged in to my google account at work, which I normally don't.

So it's good for their stats department.

Google's getting B(l)ing

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