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Comment by chrisbolt | Hacker News Reader

I see no way to have no image background. The "White" editor's choice image doesn't make it look like it used to. Very annoying.

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Yeah, the white lettering makes it very hard to read.

Why is Google trying so hard to be more like Bing? The backgrounds are just visual noise getting in the way of what I want my search engine to get done for me.

How many of you actually go to the Google homepage to search? With Chrome/Chromium, just type on the address bar; for Firefox have shortcut prefixes. (like "g hacker news" searches for "hacker news".)

i think this is exactly why the change to google.com was made. it only appeals to the people who have set their homepage to google.com.

Ah interesting theory - it's a sort of product segmentation at work. I could buy that.

I use it almost exclusively. I've never liked using the address bar or search bar. It just feels wrong for some reason.

For me it's habit. I click on the address bar, I type "go" and chrome fills in the rest, than I hit enter and do my stuff. It's muscle memory.

I set Duck Duck Go as my primary browser search engine a long time ago but still habitually type "go" and use google. This change should be all I need to remember to type "du" instead of "go".

For those wondering how to get rid of the background (I sure was) - just

1. Sign in to Google.

2. Click the white "Change Background Image" link in the lower left-hand corner.

3. Select "Editor's Picks."

4. Scroll all the way to the bottom, where a plain white background is available.

(Oddly enough, after being alarmed and even angered by the weird image, I actually found myself really liking a plain grey background.)

Thanks, I didn't notice the link because it was blending in with the background...

The link at the bottom left saying "Remove background image" puts it back to normal. Proof: http://skitch.com/petercooper/d8t8h/remove

(Update: Seems this doesn't work for everyone!)

Interesting; it's probably an A/B test, since I'm not given that option. At the bottom left corner, my screen says, "Change background image."

EDIT: Actually, I selected a background, and then I was given the option to "Remove background image." Unfortunately, this just reset my background image to whatever Google had chosen for me.

That doesn't work for me -- just reverts to the default piggybank (?) photo.

If I select a "white" background, it doesn't give the old Google page -- it has translucent text with shadows. Looks super ugly. Very annoying.

Come on Google! People love you for your simplicity. That's one reason you broke away from Yahoo's then-dominance of search/startpages years ago.

hmm. when i go to my local google the remove background image does not work properly. but on google.com it works every time.

I created a 800x600px transparent png, then uploaded that as my background image. Sucks that its necessary but seriously, this is bs.

That's what I've just done too... well, a .gif. The white text of Google now looks terrible.

It's really ugly no matter what now. I don't think I'll be visiting the home page again for a while... might set up one of their custom search boxes on a page of my own so that I can avoid the home page.

Agreed. Even the White image was buried at the end of the list. I don't see this lasting too long.

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