From the Google Blog:

Update June 10, 11:31AM: Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users’ choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special doodle that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate

Who has a "bug" on one of the most visited pages on the Internet. I don't buy it...

Do we really have to report on every freaking small change that happens on the google.com homepage?

Yes. Anyone who is interested in making changes to their own website may very well be interested in how changes to the largest website in the world are received by the public.

I can understand being excited about a cool pacman game being playable on the google homepage, or something that warrants a discussion on A/B testing, or for that matter, Google adding customizable backgrounds. But saying "Hey, guys, look! Google silently rolled back a blooper!"? Come on.

This minimalistic design has long been a cornerstone of Google's brand. That they are changing this (and why) is noteworthy to anybody who cares about design on the Internet.

If you don't like the story, you can skip over it to the next one. :)

You misunderstood my comment: I said I actually find the addition of wallpapers interesting. My rant is about linking to the good old page after the fact as if that's noteworthy. I mean, Google was going to remove the wallpaper at the end of the day just like they do with their logo art anyways.

Yeah, I think that they added this, faced a backlash, flubbed the rollout, and then did an about-face the next day is noteable for various reasons.

Largest website in the world? I wonder how many people actually go to the google page to search. I never do. I always use the browsers search box.

I personally never do, but was chatting to my wife today and heard that most of her office had set google.com as their browser's home page. So they definitely see/notice changes like this.

I think that this situation is more common than most readers here like to think...

Well, the search results pages are technically part of the site too.

Note: this is not visible at all to logged-in users who have iGoogle set as their default Google homepage.

Nope, but I think this change might call for someone to write an open thank you letter to Google.

They are the new Microsoft, steal and innovate.