Google has removed its tips feature. In the past when you searched for “photo sharing” for example it would have presented you with the tip “Want to share pictures? Try Google’s Picasa Web Albums”.

This feature got some bad press recently, most notably Blake Ross blog entry entitled: Tip:Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose, in which Blake argued that this feature which points users to Google only services that arent necessarily the best of breed. It bumps to the top of the page an advert for a Google product that would not have appeared as a top entry in a search result.

Google haven’t offered a reason for removing this controversial feature, im hoping that they chose to do so because of the negative feedback they have received from advertisers as well as bloggers like Blake, and for me thats a good sign … that they’re still an organisation that is willing to listen to others.