The announcement last night of iGoogle (the new name for Google Personalized
Homepage), Gadget Maker and other
localization features, shows that Google is ramping up its personalization efforts once
again. Google Blogoscoped has excellent coverage
from the Google Personalization Workshop, held yesterday at Mountain View for a select
group of local bloggers. In this post we analyze these new features and compare them to
Google's competition in both search and personalized homepages.
As Read/WriteWeb noted in February and in our recent interview with Google's Matt Cutts, Google has been experimenting with personalization a lot this year. In regards to its personalized homepage, Google has always had far more gadgets available on its platform than live.com, Netvibes or Pageflakes. Currently there are over 25,000 different Google gadgets that you can put on your iGoogle page. Also according to Jessica Ewing at yesterday's event, product manager of the Google Personalized Homepage program, iGoogle was the fastest growing product at Google in 2006. iGoogle will now be available in 40 countries and 26 languages.
Here is some useful background to Google's personalization efforts, from the Google Blogoscoped post:
"Why does Google invest in a “personal Google” now? Sep [Kamvar, from Google] says it’s because of recent trends in content on the web, and recent technological advances in search algorithms. He suggests that Google wants to compute PageRank for every single person, so to speak. Sep explains that Google thinks of personalization in 3 parts:
- Search Your own stuff (like Google Desktop Search, Web History)
- Traditional (Pull) Search
- Push Search (like recommendations, iGoogle/ personalized homepage)"
So Google is obviously pushing ahead with personalization on multiple fronts. If you recall, Read/WriteWeb ran a poll at the beginning of this year asking which 'Search 2.0' approaches stand the best chance to beat Google? There were 635 respondants to that poll, and Personalized Search was the most popular result. So Google's current focus on personalization shows they have no intention of allowing alternative search engines to get too far ahead in personalized search!
One important thing to note is that Google goes out of its way to ensure that the user is still "in charge" of the personalization experience, no doubt to keep the privacy hounds at bay. Apart from needing to be logged into your Google Account, Google also makes personalization optional - including giving the user the ability to pause the Web History feature or remove specific items from the history. Users can also export their Web History as an RSS feed, which is important given that the ability to export one's data has long been a key issue for 'open Web' advocates.
The new Gadget Maker product makes it very easy to create a new gadget, by "filling out a simple form". There are 7 templates available (quoting again from Google Blogoscoped):
Example Gadget Maker form
Also launched yesterday was location-based personalized search results and a “My Community” service for the iGoogle directory. Both of these features integrate localization into search or directory results.
Google seems to be fighting a two-pronged battle with their personalization efforts - one is to keep themselves ahead of the alt search engine pack, and the other is to one-up Yahoo, Microsoft, Netvibes, Pageflakes and the other personalized start page contenders. On both counts, it is great to see Google putting in so much (visible) effort. Although I still think Google has much to do in terms of innovation in search personalization - take a look at Collarity or Hakia as just two examples of alt search engines with innovative personalization approaches. But the Google Account (which is where much of this personalization in Google products is coming from) and the new iGoogle features show that Google is pushing forward in search innovation - certainly they are not resting on their considerable laurels!
As for the personalized homepages, the smaller companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes are the leaders in innovation (IMHO). But all of the Big 3 have defining features that differentiate them - Google has many gadgets (including Gmail and GTalk) and nice theme options, Yahoo has excellent usability for mainstream users, and Microsoft has some promising gadgets too. Also note that iGoogle gives Google a great platform to integrate more with Google Desktop - enabling users to have gadgets running over both platforms (Web and desktop) and utilize things like My Community on the desktop. This will concern Microsoft in particular. So all up, Google is in a strong position with iGoogle and gadgets in general.
What do you think of Google's personalization push, so far?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Google's Personalization Push: iGoogle, Localization, Gadget Maker.
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I think Google is going the right way in getting more users to go with them for basically everything they do on the web.
Who knows maybe in a 20 years time, I'll log onto the Google and not the Internet!
Posted by: Ali | May 1, 2007 3:06 PMCant wait to see what is next! You are right that in the last couple of months Google are trying to compete with the rest!
Posted by: ajaxus.net | May 1, 2007 3:11 PMEverybody is aware that Google wont change over a night, but these small steps are doing great job!
The problem with google and all these personalised start pages (or what ever they're called) is that it is difficult to attract the user and engage him or her in setting up such a page.
the one that best manages to pull users in and start using it is Netvibes but still, I believe the greatest problem these services face is attracting users and making the service appeal to the general public, not just techies.
PS. Google is competing with everyone who is doing business online
Posted by: Nicolas | May 1, 2007 5:42 PMYes, it is quite difficult to pull in NEW users who aren't normally into the whole "personalized page" thing...these are probably more specifically the same category of people who swear-off MySpace as well. Google, MS, and Yahoo all have the advantage of already having a lot of email/account members. I think more of Google's account members would be interested in iGoogle simply because they all love Google, Gmail, and all of the products in between...whereas MS and Yahoo have a lot of crap-apps that are more intrusive and annoying than actually being useful.
I'm a die-hard Google fan myself. I've even considered working for them (self-employed developer) whereas I wouldn't work for MS or any other tech firm out there. That in mind, I probably won't give iGoogle a try until someone I know gives it a thumb up or two. I'm not big into the gadgets they currently provide...I don't see the need for them...but then again I also don't see the big deal in MySpace and even though I have one; I rarely check it.
Once they start developing gadgets more towards the tech guys and professionals moreso than the teen/average web surfer market...with gadgets that are more useful. The gadgets they have LOOK cool, and their IG page looks good too. I'm sure they're currently developing a bunch of new things for it...so we'll see what happens.
Posted by: Dave | May 1, 2007 7:09 PMA few points:
1) I actually think Pageflakes is the best at mainstream usability and ease of page setup. By far. My dad set up his page in seconds, and for the first time with any of these products, he gets it - and likes it.
2) Google's personalization efforts have been going on for a while now...whenever you create an account there you are by default consenting to have your search history mined, ostensibly, to make your search results more relevant. I have never detected an improvement in my search results by consenting to this...IMO, letting them track and mine my search queries and results is too high a cost to pay for the little benefit they offer in return.
Posted by: zarang | May 1, 2007 11:00 PMI say this all the time, but again: Why is personalisation so important to Google? Yes it's important but surely SEARCH is their main objective and improving that is what they should be rolling out continual updates on. It worries me that perhaps they've got to the size where they're almost unable to modify the way they index and analyse data.
Posted by: Phill Midwinter | May 2, 2007 2:36 AMI like the direction they are going but wonder if they are going to win over the masses. Most people don't have a Gmail account and won't take the time to customize a search page. I think Google is just hedging its bets, as you mentioned, so it's not caught unprepared if the alt search movement takes off.
Posted by: Alan | May 2, 2007 8:10 AMThis is my own quote. One day, I shall be known for it.
Posted by: me (from gmail) | May 2, 2007 11:42 AM"Google. The on-line OS."
I think Google knows how to increase its user base. The way new additions are made. I think each of the products and services being offered are unique.
Google already has plans for operating system. Based on past performance of Google they will do different in this field also.
Posted by: Retail Wholesale Imitation Jewelry India | May 3, 2007 12:55 PMWhen I have iGoogle, first thing in my mind is what application can bring business value. Unlike weather, time, or art tool, is there any application small and easy to be used by end users. On the other hand, it can also benefit the community. Then I come across a tool for Amazon search done by Flex, see the link above to see a great tool for book or CD search in amazon. I feel this kinds of utility web 2.0 should work more...
Posted by: bing | May 4, 2007 7:25 AM