Google lets you add a background photo to their home page.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, they say. In fact, much of the most productive innovation taking place in the business sector is copying, and we are not the ones to complain if copying leads to a better search experience.

We actually think Bing’s home page looks great. The background picture does not add much in terms of functionality, but it does look good, and we humans are aesthetic beings. Ask.com added the option to add skins (a background image on the search page a long time ago. As Apple has understood, the looks of a product may be as important as how it works.

Google has now added its own way of adding a picture to the home page. Unlike Bing the company lets you choose the picture.

Click on the link “Change Background Image” in the bottom left hand corner of the Google home page. This opens a separate window where you can choose among different picture files:

• From your computer
• Picasa Web Photos (if you have an account with images)
• Editor’ Picks
• Images from a Public Gallery

Phil Bradley is not too happy about the feature. He points out that Google does not give you enough information about what kind of images you can use:

“Anything less than 800×600 is rejected, but you only find that out afterwards. If the image is too large Google just chooses a bit of it, which may not be the bit that you want. I tried it with a few image sizes, and two that worked for me were 1233×600 and 3472×1689 – so roughly twice as wide as tall. Expect to do a bit of fiddling around therefore.”