Forced backgrounds? Really?
Google has been making some uncharacteristic mistakes that are driving users away.
The first blunder was last month when the Google logo was turned into a playable PacMan game. You might think this was not a bad idea at all, and it wasn’t—it was a wonderful surprise. The problem was that someone forgot to put an off button for the sound, and the game automatically would start (with sound) if a user loaded the Google home page, but didn’t navigate away (e.g. doing a search or logging into an account). They ended up correcting this problem later during the day, but the damage was done.
The second gaffe which went in effect yesterday was the forced background image for the Google home page. Initially it was an option, and was a welcome change; however, Google has decided that it’s better to force the picture on its visitors. What’s worse, there is no option to remove it, unless you are logged into your Google Account. Understandably, though apparently not to the decision-makers at Google, this forced change is at best irritating.
Hopefully Google will fix this problem soon, before it loses even more users to Bing.
For those of you who missed the PacMan logo, Google has kept it around: http://www.google.com/pacman/
Tags: Google
