By far the biggest announcement at today's Google Factory Tour, an in-house event for local press that was Webcast
to more far-flung invitees, was of the launch of personalization features for the
Google home page. Like My Yahoo!, but far less mature, with fewer features and no specific name, This latest
Labs experiment makes Google—finally, monumentally, for better or worse—a portal.
Aware of the popularity of the pristine home page, Google has put a toggle on the personalized page, enabling users to
switch back to to the original Google look. Concerning content availability, preset feeds from Wired, the NYTimes, BBC
News, and Slashdot are available. Google forecasts a complete RSS rollout in one to two months.
The first impres
sion has to be something
along the lines of: Too little, too late, and why? At the press conference Google explained that it received feedback
from users who would like to access more information directly on the home page. Nothing wrong with servicing that
request. personalizing the home page does rather go against current trends, though, as users increasingly turn to the
Toolbar, the Deskbar, and the Firefox search box to launch keywords into Google. If Google's ambitions go beyond simple
convenience, which of course they do, and they are lobbing a competitive volley directly at My Yahoo!, then this
product needs a great deal of ripening before anyone can take it seriously. I must say that the bright-eyed
presentation by Marissa Meyer, Google's Director of Consumer Products, conveyed a ridiculous edge as she unveiled this
modest expression of a personalization format that is 5-7 years old.
This point was brought up in the Q&A period, and Meyer defended Google's thing (why the hell didn't they give it a
name? Is it because they stumbled so badly misnaming Google Video?) by explaining that Google's product suite is just
now reaching a level of variety that justifies a user-customized home page (true), and that the drag-and-drop interface
is slick enough to justify the whole thing by itself (maybe, though it looks a lot like Google News customization,
which isn't making anyone feverish).
Interesting to note that Google plans to roll out complete RSS functionality in a couple of months; it appears, as of
now, that Google's first presentation of a holistic RSS environment will be on the home page, not in Gmail as many have
guessed. But that is speculation, and Google loves surprise launches.
1. It's really well done I'm suprised and still with all of that stuff the homepage still feels clean.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Steve