Google just doesn't get visual design right, when it's a bit more than just a plain UI.<p>Chrome's themes are just ugly:
<a href="https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html</a><p>Such are many of the background pictures Google is providing for the home page. It's sad.
Google had Bing envy, so through a massive engineering effort and R&D they have managed to reverse engineer and clone Bing's #1 differentiator. Let The Search Engine Wars Begin Anew!
Ah - blessed relief. Quoth Google: "Please be assured these images will only be displayed today, and the homepage will return to its regular white background tomorrow."<p>See the response from one "Paul" (Google Employee) here:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=52d49a85dcfbdb9f&hl=en" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?ti...</a>
The first background image I got was absolutely awful. It greatly obscured the actual content of the page, and didn't look very good either. I tried the "Change background image" link, but couldn't actually change it without logging into a Google account. In fact, it was so awful that I left and did my search with Bing.<p>Trying the homepage again just now I got an image that had a little more contrast with the page content, and looked a little better, but still is not very attractive overall. Most of the sample pictures they list don't look very appealing either.<p>This is one of the biggest failures I've seen from Google. Marissa, if you're listening, please give us our white background back. I will not be executing any more Google searches with these backgrounds, and choosing my own background on an iGoogle homepage is not an acceptable solution.<p>In all the time since my first Google search in the late 90s, this is the ONLY thing that has given me sufficient motivation to switch my default search engine away from Google.
Google must be loosing market share to Bing to behave so panicky. First there is Bing like left column in search result page, and now the background image. Maybe they get sleepless with Bing appearing on iOS devices.
The only site that I've seen really get themes right is WolframAlpha. Their small, tasteful theme gallery (<a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/homesettings.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolframalpha.com/homesettings.html</a>) is really very well put together.
The photos they provide are very nice, but as everybody has pointed out, they are pointless.<p>However, what if the image was dynamically generated, say from news articles/photos or some other dynamic graphic that's related to the user. That's the only use I see.
Google can shove images up their arse. I don't give a damn. I was keeping them as my browser's home page as long as it was clean. Now I have switched to DDG.