For web services to grow and improve user functionality, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. In this case, the search giant Google is discontinuing its service that provides background images on the main Google home page.

According to a WebProNews article, back in September, Google announced that they would be scrapping the functionality that allows users to upload personalized images to Google with Classic Plus, and that the service would be completely turned off in November (this month). Now, Google users utilizing the background images function on their home page will receive the following message.

Background images are going away on November 16, 2012

Thank you for using background images. As we build a more streamlined Google Search page for everyone, we’ll no longer be able to support customization with background images. So you will no longer be able to see your background pictures starting November 16, 2012.

Click Remove to stop using a background image now. Your current background image and Picasa web albums will still be available to you.

With this premise, Google users utilizing this function will now be forced to always see the regular landing page that all non-logged-in users will see. This may drive some users to render Google’s competitor Bing, which continues to have a rotating background image every day.

Will Google lose search users because of their removal of this feature? Please leave your reaction/feedback below in this post’s comments section.