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Thursday, May 19, 2005

"My Google" Feature Coming Soon?

Update: OK, so here it is: google.com/ig, the Google Personalized Homepage. Drag-and-drop works very smooth as expected. Unfortunately you can’t yet add any RSS, but the help page says this will be added in the future (in the next 1-2 months, as Marissa Mayer says).

 

I’ll file this under semi-rumor until later today: several sources report Google will unveil a new “My Google"-style, customizable portal app later on today. As usual, you’ll sign up using your Google Account. You can then have Gmail, weather, stocks, news, driving directions or movie quotes all on one page, and drag-and-drop position them to wherever you want. Feeds from sites like the BBC, the New York Times, Slashdot and others can be included as well (I suppose this is a general RSS reader, but I don’t have any details or official announcements yet).

Apparently, the screenshots for this application leaked from the Google Factory Tour Webcast and have now been pulled from the original Shareholder.com site. John Battelle reports “While watching the webcast I noticed a Powerpoint glitch that showed integration of address books and local search, but I did not get a screenshot in time.”

What will this service be called, and where will we be able to find it? I can’t answer that, but here’s an Interesting tidbit: the domain iGoogle.com is registered by Google Inc. It currently shows the Google homepage. The name “MyGoogle” might be a second option.

So, how big a deal is “iGoogle” after all? Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch Blog thinks this is a mere manifestation of what’s been available for a while:

“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.”

Let’s wait and see – more updates later on when My Google indeed surfaces.

[Thanks Luca Conti.]

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