Dude that was up all day yesterday.

i like it and i hope that they do roll it out to all regions, eventually though i would like the images to be customisable so that i can choose a different one.

Overall though it is something unique to Live Search :)

Naturally superior work!

I found 3 or 4 hotspots in the picture.  Very appealing design, I must say.

glassuser: agreed - some users (like yourself, Kip and Jamie) have been seeing it for a while. This marks the rollout to the en-us market, so now its available to all :)

@derviskemal: rather than customisable, I'd rather them to change it on certain "special" days or celebrations, similar to how google changes its logo (but this is far better).

yet another homepage redesign?

I hope this becomes as much a trademark as the Google logo redesigns that take place every "special occasion."

damaster, alber1690, spot on. I'm looking forward to seeing what they put on there for public holidays. Shame they missed 4th July, what's the next one? Halloween?

-Jamie

It would be good if they do change it for special occasions.

Let's hope they have that idea down somewhere! :D

Nice touch and all, but is there a way to disable it? I couldn't find one. I just want an option for a clean search box page.

I like the idea of being able to customize it and have a kind of rss feeds map/image, something dynamic that gives you personalized information in a hotspot manner...

On a different, yet more important note, I tried to start using Live Search instead of Google about two or three months ago and found out that the search results were really out of touch with was I expected, making a really dissatisfying experience and confirming the fact that google is the seach king....

But I just tried it today again and the results were very much on par with Google's, even the look and feel was pretty much the same (shamefully, though reasonably understandable if you want to take a market share away from Google)...

Has there been a recent change in the search engine that I didn't read about? Or is it still a matter of luck regarding the keywords you use? Anyone else have an opinion regarding this Google vs Live Search experience?

still a matter of luck. I seem to have 50/50 good and bad results.