Normal people love this kind of stuff. When they use a computer they like to see their kids photos all over the place, or their beach house they saved up for, or their dogs, or whatever. They want their computer desktop to be like their physical desktop.

Just because you don't appreciate it doesn't mean it's a "stupid gimmick".

EDIT: clarify a point

Maybe. Google’s draw (for me, and I assume for at least some others) was always that it took a cut the bullshit, focus on the results approach.

Not really, in ChromeOS, the google homepage will be kind of like your desktop. So putting a picture there is like putting a picture on your desktop wallpaper. Also, Google.com/ig has been themable for years, so allowing to put pictures is not a copy of bing IMO, just an improvement of the theme feature.

Okay, well even if you think that having a customizable search-engine backdrop picture is a killer feature, can’t we at least agree that Gruber’s snarky joke implying it’s just as gimmicky as Bing’s non-customizable search-engine backdrop picture is still just a joke, and not really proof that he’s biased against Google in general?

have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever?

what about (back in the day) microsoft, (recently) adobe and (since the january battle call) google?

all the time?

> have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever?

Yes. Numerous times. I’m not really in the mood to go skimming through the several months of archives it would take to find a good example.

To be honest though, Microsoft is much easier to ridicule, because they have much looser control over their messaging, and so it’s not terribly surprising that a generally Apple-oriented commentator could consistently poke fun at them.

A recent example of snark against Apple. Gruber had generally seemed to think that has been reasonable in deal with Gizmodo and the acquired iPhone. However, when Jobs was reported to have said that Apple had to stand by it's core values in dealing withrge situation, Gruber said he wasn't sure what core value that might be, other than "don't fuck with us." ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/02/jobs-slide ). That sounds just a but snarky to me. You can read this snark againt Apple on the current front page at DaringFireball, not far from the one about Google. It's not unusual for Gruber to write snarky things about Apple. People who say otherwise: a) don't read Gruber and have no idea what he says and are thus unqualified to comment on his content, or b) do read him, but are so biased against him that their selective memory taints their ability to make objective comments.