In what appears to be a tip of the hat (and a bit of one-upsmanship) to Bing's image-rich search page, Google has announced the ability personalize your default view of the Google search page with your own photo. While Bing has become known for the daily rotation of lush images (and the informative annotations that accompany them) on its homepage, users have no control over the selection of those images.

With this new feature, you can select any image from your computer, your Picasa image storage account, or any public Picasa galleries to serve as the background for your Google search page.

In an Official Google Blog post, Marisa Meyer, Google's VP of Search Products & User Experience, indicated that the feature would be available via a "link in the lower left-hand corner of Google.com." We have not yet seen this feature in any any of the browser/operating system combinations we've tried. The blog post also indicated that the feature would be rolled out to "users in the U.S. over the next few days." 

(H/T The NextWeb via Techmeme)