Google, Inc. announced plans to launch a personalized homepage. Google calls their strategic initiative a "fusion".
The personalized Google homepage combines search, news, email and weather. Users can also ad feeds from The New York Times, Wired News, BBC News and other features such as stocks and movie listings.
Google reported $1.3 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2005; the revenue was primarily from advertising. It's likely that the personalized homepage will drive more traffic to the text-based ads.
Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Yahoo! is the web's most visited site and attracted 98.7 million users in March 2005. Google was the fourth most visited site with 75.1 million users. Yahoo!'s MyYahoo! attracted 21 million users in March 2005.
Google's foray into personalized home pages has created diverse reactions within the interactive industry. Some interpret Google's move as way to ante up against rival portals while others see the move as a continuation of Google's mission of wining over consumers and increasing exposure to its ads.
"The introduction of Google's Personalized Homepage provides yet another example of how the online marketing battle lines are far from delineated. Leading players continue to innovate, and consumers win as a result of the competition," says Charles Buchwalter, vice president of analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.
"Clearly it's another step with Google to compete with the other portals. Although Google is the dominant search engine, they lack the portal lock-in that MSN and Yahoo! have. By introducing a personalized page, Google gives the consumers more of a reason to use Google as their start home page," says James Lamberti, vice president, search solutions, comScore Networks.
"I think the trend with the major portals and ISP's is personalization. Your personal home page experience is a way to reflect your interests and tastes whether it's the current weather or movie listings. Google's personalized home page seems to fit in with the Google mantra of minimalism. If you're already a heavy Google user, the new personalized home page is likely to be a familiar and welcoming experience," says Jerry Grasso, director of corporate communications, Earthlink, Inc.
"The personalized homepage's innovative design enables users to drag and drop 'sections' in order to arrange the page as they want. Once they've created their personalized homepage, they view it by signing in to their Google Account from any computer. There's also a convenient link back to the 'classic' Google home page," says Barry Schnitt, spokesperson, Google.
Additional resources:
Advertisement