User feedback kills Google picture experiment

Google has stopped an experiment that added images to its home page

Google has halted an experiment in page design which put an optional picture background on its home page for registered users.

The experiment, which was supposed to last 24 hours, was taken down after less than half that time. The modification arrived with no obvious way to opt out, and caused a storm among users.

"Bloody Google! Is there a way to NOT have a blooming background picture?!," tweeted Isabelle80. "Glad I'm not the only one who hates the ridiculous Google Background Image. I'm sick of having stuff thrust on me like this."

The change also clearly confused some users. The second most popular search term on the search engine yesterday was 'Google background'.

Google announced the change last night, and then followed up with a note explaining why the experiment had been stopped, blaming a bug in the code that would have made it easier to opt out.

"Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users' choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special 'doodle' that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage," wrote Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, in a blog post.

"We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today's series early."