Google is releasing a new feature on its home page — a Share button with your Google Profile avatar next to it. I find it distracting. But you can at least make it less garish, if not disappear.
Danny Sullivan reports that this new feature marks the first time you can do something other than search on its home page. If you don’t already have it on your signed in Google homepage, you soon will.
And while the Share button is annoying to me, seeing my photo is worse. It’s clutter on a clean surface. It always draws my eye, and not in a good way. If it annoys you too, there’s a super easy hack to make it at least slightly less bad. This trick won’t help with the Share button or that equally annoying red box with the Plus nag, but at least you can make the avatar image disappear.
Click on your avatar in the upper right hand corner of Google’s new homepage and select “Profile.” Next, click the Edit Profile button. Just below your profile picture, click the “Change Photo” link. Upload a plain white image, and set that as your profile photo.
Presto! You’re done.
The annoying Share button will remain, but at least the annoying photo is gone, and you’ve reclaimed a tad more whitespace. Check out the cleaned up version below.