
Google's getting B(l)ing - rottencupcakes
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/freeze-frame.html
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hugh3
I don't see a helluva lot of point. It seems like it's just a thumb in the eye
of bing and everybody who has said "I like bing, it has pretty pictures". But
it completely avoids the actual value of bing, which is to give you a new and
interesting pretty picture every day. And in fact, just reading this article
made me go look at bing's last few pictures.

If I want to look at one of my _own_ pretty pictures, or some other picture
I've chosen myself, I'll just make it my desktop background.

~~~
Ygor
"... I'll just make it my desktop background."

Interesting. This is actually what first came to my mind: Google is copying
the desktop? Not Bing. As many of you said, Bing isn't the first web page to
put a pretty background picture (some of the first web pages were the first
web pages with pretty background pictures, were they not?). And, as we
concluded, the concept is different - choosing, instead of getting a random
pic.

So, now you can change the "desktop background" of your google homepage - "the
Internet", as often called by many people where I come from. Add some
shortcuts to the picture with pretty custom icons (links), support for a
clock, a calendar (widgets), a tray or a bar with quick launch and various
options...

If only a browser existed that loaded automatically when you start your
computer, without the need for all that "windows loading stuff"... :)

~~~
henrikhansen
Chrome OS?

~~~
Ygor
Exactly. Just asking a question from the perspective of a !hacker. :)

I was aiming at the concept of the "cloud desktop", as kierank commented in
the meantime.

~~~
rooshdi
If you're looking for an experience similar to the concept of a "cloud
desktop," you should try out Favetop. It has icon shortcuts, which you
described above, along with media management and social sharing capabilities.
We currently do not have a customizable wallpaper option as of right now, but
we are planning on offering this feature in the near future.

~~~
kierank
You could perhaps try and internationalise it a bit. e.g. Hulu replaced with
BBC iPlayer etc.

~~~
rooshdi
Thank for the suggestion. We're going to continue to try our best to ensure
international users have as many of their favorite web apps and sites
available to them as U.S. users. We currently have over 1,000 web apps and
sites in our database for you to choose from and we are looking to offer users
the option to upload their own site icons very soon. Btw, the BBC iPlayer app
is now available with the added ability to directly search it from your
Favetop if you'd like. If you have any other suggestions please let us know
through the "Suggestions/Feedback" link on our homepage. :)

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Kilimanjaro
Best pics don't interfere with the purpose of the page.

<http://i.imgur.com/uobal.jpg>

~~~
est
Is there a way to use Bing background automatically for Google?

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julio_the_squid
Now that every browser includes a search bar next to the address input, why go
to Google's home page at all? I very rarely do so.

~~~
rottencupcakes
In order to develop my own opinion, I've been running a little experiment for
the past week in which I switched the search box to Bing.

Basically, I have found very little difference in Google and Bing's search.
They are both equally functional and fast. If anything, I've found that I have
no reason to switch back to Google - Bing's daily rethemeing adds a little
spark to my day.

I encourage everyone to try this for a week. You'll be amazed at how
undifferentiated the two major search players truly are at search. These
little user delighters are going to be a huge component in the battle for
search revenue in the near future.

~~~
strebler
Agreed - other than coverage and update frequency, they're very similar
results. I think I actually prefer Bing overall.

~~~
wizard_2
I disagree, every new server or desktop I setup has bing as the default search
engine, before switching them to google, I'll sometimes try my search in bing
and be horribly dissatisfied. I may have learned how to search on google (in a
way to get better google results) but I can't figure out how to get Bing to
give me what I'm looking for.

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ephermata
My mother regularly tells me how much she loves the Bing photos and how she's
looking forward to "what will they put up next." She was asking yesterday how
long it would be before Google did the same. Now we know...

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AdamGibbins
Tweet a picture? Given up with Buzz then?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Fortunately google is not quite as dumb as other companies in forcing every
aspect of its business to pay the "strategy tax" of supporting every other
product of the business regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

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shadowsun7
I love the idea. I'm not sure if the implementation would be better than the
current white page (I'm very easily distracted, and I sometimes spend a couple
of minutes on Bing just flipping through the background photos - they're a
sampling of current world affairs, if you don't know) and so I think this is a
visual improvement.

That said - I may well waste more time changing my background image the way I
do my wallpaper.

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Raphael
No dice if it removes holiday logos like iGoogle does.

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stanleydrew
Yet another step in turning the browser into an operating system --
customizable backgrounds.

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tewks
Given the fact that the company relies so heavily on data when making UI
decisions, I have a feeling that Google must have some pretty convincing data
that would lead them to copy bing both in search results, and now with these
iGoogle options...

~~~
nfnaaron
Or, they're trying to encourage you to be logged in when you search. IIUC, you
won't see "your" personalized picture unless you're logged in and cookied.

~~~
SanjayU
We have a winner ^

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cmelbye
Bing is hardly the first search engine to use a photo as a background image.
Ask and Wikia Search are two examples off the top of my head that have offered
that feature as well (most likely before Bing was launched, too.)

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what
But it won't have the mouse overs that gives you little factlets? Does anyone
know where Bing gets the images and facts for the mouse overs? Is it someone's
job to put those together?

~~~
flubba
It definitely looks like the mouseover content is manually inputted, but since
Microsoft acquired Powerset (<http://www.powerset.com>) last year, they could
also pull some information about topics from it.

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staunch
They should have left this kind of thing to iGoogle I think. Even if people
like it, it's going to subtly dilute their image of Google being The Dead
Simple choice.

~~~
w1ntermute
How so? It's an _optional feature_. It's not enabled by default, so only those
who want this feature will be using it.

~~~
staunch
Assume for the sake of argument that you agree it is a harmful feature for
Google's image in the long term. In that case does making it an optional
feature make any difference, beyond minimizing the damage?

~~~
w1ntermute
Making it optional isn't "minimizing the damage", it's making a feature
available to people who see it as a _positive thing_. This will improve
Google's image in the eyes of its users, not harm it.

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moolave
Just one market route to drive more users to their homepage. Definitely an
optional preference.

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pkaler
New Google is the new New Coke. I guess that makes Bing Pepsi.

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duck
Great title!

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mdg
heh... <http://imgur.com/rUt1A.jpg>

~~~
klenwell
Is that the UCSD library?

~~~
mdg
China Pavilion at 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

It took me a couple months of using Bing to figure this out, but if you mouse
over the little copyright symbol in the bottom-right of the image, it will
tell you who took the picture and what it is of.

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sswam
Well, the point is that now I can have a hubble deep field image as my
background for google search, which is a enough reason for me to stay logged
in to my google account at work, which I normally don't.

So it's good for their stats department.

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Andi
Why is this on hacker news?

