Hot on the heels of the Plus Box announcement, and following a raft of new features added to the personalised homepage, are six custom themes that aim to add something new and unique to world's favourite search engine.
For those users not content with the now familiar all-white and Spartan Google search box, there is now the choice of themes ranging from the classic all white to 'Bus Stop', Beach, Sweet dreams, Tea House, Cityscape and Seasonal scape. These are designed to appeal to those who want to see something different when they log in to their favourite search engine.
These new 'skins' are all built using a cascading style sheets (CSS) framework, incorporating designer illustrations and buttons into the page. With the Google homepage acting as the default homepage for a large number of internet users, it appears Google is trying something a little different to the personalised features of its biggest rival, Yahoo!, who has been experimenting with a selection of decorative skins in its 'MyYahoo!' service.
Many have been debating the significance of Google's step up to this more complicated layout, which is more similar to that of Yahoo! and a large leap away from its hallmark plain white page that has so far acted to define the search engine's unique nature. Indeed the introduction of personalised features two years ago was seen as a significant development for Google, who added elements such as weather reports and stock quotes to a site that had traditionally resisted bombarding their users with information in this way.
The new themes have an added Google twist in that they adapt to reflect the changes in real time. Users are asked to enter their postcode and the illustrations change with the weather and time of day. At present, a number of 'Easter Eggs' are hidden in the themes and, if a user visits their personalised page at the right time, they will see unique changes to the illustrations that will not be seen again!
Google are actively encouraging users to notify the search engine of which new designs or themes they would like to see in the future - and it seems this is a new Google innovation that is here to stay.
