Living Organism

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Foundation

Much to the dismay of users worldwide, search-engine giant Google yesterday launched a new customizable background feature for their search homepage. The backlash was immediate and intense, and Google’s response, surprisingly swift. The initial announcement was on June 9, 2010 and only 24 hours later, Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience left this comment on the Official Google Blog:

Update June 10, 11:31AM: 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. 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. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.

Personally, I found the experience a little frustrating, a sentiment echoed across the blogosphere. The fact that there wasn’t an explanation as to why my homepage looked different and why I wasn’t able to revert back to the classic Google homepage, was just very un-Google. It was surprising, as the company is notorious for providing excellent documentation and support when they introduce new features. The fact Google pulled down their “doodle” Thursday afternoon, says a lot about how committed they are to their users. People talk (or whine) and Google listens. The backgrounds were up barely long enough for their west-coast users to see.

From a branding standpoint, it was an interesting move; an obvious grab at Microsoft’s Bing user base. Overall though, I think this was genius on Google’s part. I can’t even imagine the traffic spike at google.com vs. the traffic lull at bing.com. One could argue that one day of traffic is just a blip on the radar. But just think of the sheer number of additional impressions and conversions Google could have potentially garnered. The fact that I am writing about this, and that something like this is even newsworthy highlights how ubiquitous Google is and their overall global relevance. And at the end of the day, it’s a true testament of brand loyalty to see Google’s willingness to swiftly respond (and take action) to meet their user’s wants and needs.