Even Google gets it wrong...sometimes

In a day and age where you can personalise your ringtone, your number plate and even your clothes, you might've thought the general public would have had their fill of personalisation-mania. Apparently not, as Google attempted to prove.

As a means to advertise its new homepage customisation feature, Google's decision to subject users to a barrage of bold, brash and disorientating images saw the QueryClick office erupt in outrage.

Long gone was the minimalist canvas that we've come to know and love before diving into the world of search. Instead images like tulips, picturesque lakes and rippling sand dunes made the whole experience feel like you'd inadvertently stumbled onto National Georgraphic rather than the daddy of search engines. Needless to say, QueryClick rage levels nudged up to a desk banging 7 on the QC rage-o-meter.

As our PPC buff David Fothergill pointed out: “It looks suspiciously like Bing.”

Colourful and supposedly inspirational images of owl chicks and thunder storms have long been commonplace on the Google rival's homepage so with Bing's popularity creeping up, could this be the first time that Google's drawn inspiration from Microsoft?

Google's decision to trial the feature also seemed a little trivial in light of IGoogle whose sole purpose is to provide users with the opportunity to customise their homepage beyond just images and into the realms of interests, themes, locations and time zones.

Sadly for Google, their experiment didn't go down very well as many people thought that the homepage had been changed permanently. Forever.

Furthermore, when users were invited to change the background image to a picture of their choosing the URL in the help text didn't work.

An epic fail on Google's part and a world gone 'personalisation' crazy? We think so.