Google brings art to all those blank tabs

googleartinstituteThe Google Art Project extension adds glorious pictures of art to your boring blank tabs in Chrome.

You simply add in the Art Project extension, and every new tab you open up is backed with a lovely scan of a piece of art together with, if you wish, information on what you’re looking at. You can choose whether to have a new piece of art daily or every time you open a new tab – I recommend the later.

The art is all drawn from the Google Cultural Institute, and it includes a fair bit of Australian art drawn from the public galleries around the country.

Once the Chrome extension is in play you have links to frequently visited sites available as well as to Google Drive. You don’t get a search box in the middle of your screen though, so you have to search from the top bar. Not a big deal when the trade of is a bit of enrichment in your day.

This is exactly the sort of trade-off which makes me shrug my shoulders at the idea of Google serving me up some ads along the way. This isn’t just not being evil, it’s positively doing good.

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