Make Google’s search page your own

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Part of Google’s classic appeal has been its clean, simple home page. Now it’s letting users gussy it up.

Users can now download their own photo from their computers or Picasa Web albums as background on Google.com.

“Google.com is now yours to customize,” Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products & user experience, said in a blog post.

It’s worth noting that Google is taking a page from Bing, which already has a similar feature that displays a new photo every day. And, of course, Bing borrowed that same page from Ask.com which offers themes.

The new Google feature will roll out over the next few days in the United States. Just click on a link that will appear in the bottom left corner of the home page. You will be able to switch between the customized search page and classic Google.

Google wants to see your customized pages: You can tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage.

-- Jessica Guynn