Note: A more complete story from Search Engine Watch about the new service is now here: Google Launches Personalized Home Page
Google is unveiling today a new My Google-style service allowing people to consolidate various Google features they use, ranging from web search to email, in one place.
The new page will no doubt make many people scream "Portal!" That’s because despite the name, it is essentially a "My Google" service, similar to the My Yahoo, My MSN and
other My pages that portals created so their users could access the many features they offer.
Well, Google’s already been a stealth portal for some time, offering standard portal features such as email and home page (blogs), as I’ve written before. The page is
merely a visible acknowledgement of this.
But the page is also welcomed. It makes sense for Google to offer a unified page for many of its services, and the page does this without impacting the regular Google site
nor getting far away from the general Google feel at all.
Available through Google Labs later today, you can sign-up for the page if you have a Google
Account. Once created, you’ll see something that looks almost the same as the regular Google home page. But below the search box, you’ve got new options:
- News
- Gmail
- Weather
- Stocks
- Driving Directions
- Movies
I’ll be writing more about this when the information is fully presented. However, you can already get a preview due to slides that Luca Conti ferreted out from the webcast.
He’s got screenshots here, as noted in the comments on John Battelle’s
site.
Postscript: You’ll find the information now posted here on the personalized home page.