Google is for the first time promoting its Personalized Homepage on the google.com homepage, using football World Cup modules/widgets. There is a "New! Add World Cup live scores and schedules to this page" promo link directly under the search query box, which leads to a "Welcome to Your Google homepage. Make it your own" start page.
This is great to see and shows (once again) that Google is tackling Microsoft head-on in key market segments. Indeed earlier this evening Microsoft announced an upgrade to its personalized homepage, live.com (it will be released next week, but I have preview screenshots on my ZDNet blog). Also of course, the little startups are doing a lot in this market currently (Netvibes, Pageflakes, et al). See my post earlier this week - The Future of Personalized Start Pages - for my analysis on this.
Screenshots of the google.com promotion and World Cup modules below. Game on!
p.s. I can't wait for the World Cup to start! I'm a big fan of Brazil, they epitomize the Beautiful Game.
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...but Brazil will be beaten by Germany (masters of the late goal while playing unattractive soccer) eventually ;-)
Cheers
Ole
Posted by: Ole Brandenburg | June 9, 2006 2:11 AM
Bah, another bandwagon-jumping Brazil fan. Support your local team, go Aussies!
Posted by: Paul Montgomery | June 9, 2006 5:22 AM
Well apart from wearing yellow shirts too, there's not much comparison between Brazil and Australia. It's like the gulf between the All Blacks and the aussie rugby team.
Still, I hope the aussies draw at least one game...
Posted by: Richard MacManus | June 9, 2006 5:44 AM
Now question Brazil has the best players/team this year, but that is not always enough to win the World Cup.
Posted by: Marcelo Calbucci | June 9, 2006 10:38 AM
Y'know, somehow I just can't get all that excited about personalized "home pages" on the major portal providers. They do have some utility, but in general they seem pretty unwieldy and restrictive...
Posted by: Grokodile | June 9, 2006 11:29 AM
Grokodile, I agree currently the Goog and MS start pages are unwieldy - but I think once widgets/gadgets become more commonplace, usable and functional, this is something that will evolve into a mainstream tool. I expect Yahoo to join the party at that point too, but perhaps they will do a much better job at usability (given their experience with MyYahoo).
Posted by: Richard MacManus | June 9, 2006 3:01 PM