If you’ve seen the Google home page over the last several days they’ve forced background images if you didn’t login and turn it back to the “Google original” page. This was a bid by Google to get you to login to your Google account in order to stop the crappy wallpaper and change it back. The reason they did this was to get you to be logged in to get it back to the original look and feel. If you didn’t, then you’d see this crappy random wallpaper. The goal for them was to keep you logged in all times, so they could track your searches through you’re Google account and send you targeted advertising.

Yesterday they stopped this practice, probably because of the number of people who completely freaked out over it. Now it’s back to the normal page. I can see why Google would try to force people into logging in to change the home page, but at the same time the backlash to this change. It’s so annoying and controlling at the same time.   The reason is to force you to login, so you keep sending them all your searches and they can send their ads to you. Really good for them, not so good for you.