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SAN
FRANCISCO—On Wednesday night
Google
radically departed from its minimalist look, filling all
of that white space with colorful full-screen
photographs, much to the consternation of some users who
started searching "remove
Google
background."
Google
got the message and zapped the gallery of professional
background images, wiping the screen clean and returning
to its Spartan aesthetic Thursday.
Marissa Mayer
,
Google's
vice president for search products, alerted the world in
a tweet.
The
retreat from
Google
-imposed images of flowery hippos and the like ended a
short-lived experiment that mirrored
Microsoft's
rival search engine, Bing, which features a colorful new
photograph each day.
Google's
feature was mocked by
Microsoft
executives in
Europe
who quipped: "We've lost a background image; if
found please return to bing.com."
Searchengineland.com's
Danny Sullivan
joked: "I think it's really nice that for Bing's
birthday,
Google
is honoring it by having a Bing-like photo
background."
Bing is
behind
Google
in market share.
The
experiment was designed to promote a new feature
released by
Google
last week that allows users to add their own background
images. The new feature drew attention, but probably not
in the way the Internet giant intended.
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