Brace yourselves. An angry nerd rant is coming.

If you’re an avid internet user such as myself, you’ll come into many situations where you need a specific sized image, to use for anything ranging from a profile picture, forum signature, or picture for an article such as this. Google for years has been the easiest and greatest go-to for the best images, both in quality and quantity. Google has even stepped up their game in recent years, adding more search options to help you get to exactly what you need. You could search for an exact size (ex. 400 x 300), and even look for something larger than a minimum.

Upon loading up Google Images to do some quick searching a few days ago, I was met with an entirely new layout that seemed to allow more images to load on the page.  Unphased, I began looking for the typical image searching options I was so accustomed to, only to find that they didn’t exist. In disbelief, I began searching every inch of the page, from advanced search settings to even the most unrelated options for hope of finding what I needed. Sure enough, I did not find what I was looking for.

To this very minute, I am still very appalled at what Google has done. They have literally taken a step backwards just to allow more images to appear on a page, which by the way does not help me at all. On any given day I use Google to satisfy my image-finding needs (usually for game journalism), and now I have to look elsewhere.

This isn’t just me bitching and complaining about the new layout. Thousands of Google users have already been firing up a storm in various Google message boards, with various Google representatives acting like there’s nothing wrong with the change made. They insist you clear the cache to restore to the original layout, but I have found no luck doing so.

I have however, found a small workaround that yields some kind of success. When you search an image, simply type the desired image size in the field next to the keywords. Example would be “600×300 Gravity Rush”. This search gives me images that are all 600×300, but does not produce nearly as much accuracy as the search option I’ve previously familiarized myself with.

To some people this may seem like the pettiest thing to ever complain about, but when you work in a field that requires a dependence on a feature such as this, you can’t help but get a little freaked out. Hopefully Google has the common decency to add those search options back in the near future. Otherwise, I’ll have to start using…Yahoo… –vomits-