May 20, 2005

Google gets personal

by brian_turner

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Google is following rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, to launch a personalised home page service. Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s personalised pages include news, weather, stocks, e-mail and blogs. Google’s ‘Fusion’ service, however, will offer a range of content, but, as most of its revenue comes from web advertising, will try to ensure that its users are still focused on the core search engine function. Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, stressed that it was not creating a portal, which could encourage users to spend too long on their personal home pages, but that the service was “a personalisation tool.”

Google will not, initially, place targeted adverts on personalised home pages, but could display them in future. Content will include BBC News, The New York Times, Slashdot, a technology website, and Quote of the Day and Word of the Day options. Google has previously offered a mix of unrelated services, including Gmail for e-mail and Picasa for photo sharing. The new service has the potential to significantly increase revenues for the company - according to figures released by Comscore Networks, 25% of unique visitors to Yahoo also visit My Yahoo.

In order to maintain the traditional ’sparse’ layout of Google’s search engine, users will be able to toggle between their personalised home page and the traditional one.

In April, Google recorded a 600% increase in first-quarter income to $369.2m, helped by revenues from internet advertising.

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