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Google gets personal with revised features

The expanse of white space at the bottom of Google's main Web page, possibly the most valuable undeveloped real estate in cyberspace, is about to be subdivided.

Moving more directly into competition with portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL, the search company on Thursday unveiled a feature that allows users to personalize the Google home page with features they use frequently, like stock quotes, news and e-mail.

Google's goal is to give its users an expansive, one-stop home page.

"It's Google formally declaring that they are a portal," said Danny Sullivan, the editor of searchenginewatch.com, a Web log devoted to the industry. "And it's a very competitive market."

Google announced the new feature, called Fusion, at the end of what it called the Google Factory Tour, a carefully staged daylong event in which it briefed reporters and industry analysts -- more than 100 in person, and 500 more by Webcast -- on its current services and future directions.

Until now, Google has insisted that it is first and foremost a search engine, with no plans to join the portal wars. But it has steadily added services that provide functionality far beyond searching Web pages.

Last year, Google introduced Google Desktop Search, a direct challenge to Microsoft's control of desktop computing, as it searches for information on a user's personal computer as well as on the Web. Yahoo and MSN now offer a similar feature.

For its part, Microsoft this year introduced MSN Search, a bid to counter Google's Web search capability.

"It's obviously another major effort by Google to try to combat the portal lock-in that MSN and Yahoo have," said James Lamberti, vice president of comScore Networks, a market research company.

"The question for Google is how to give consumers more utility with Google as a home page rather than just search," Lamberti said.

Competitors were quick to assert that Google was simply following a trail they had already blazed.

"Yahoo has a long and successful history in personalization," said Helena Maus, a Yahoo spokeswoman. "We launched My Yahoo nine years ago."

My Yahoo, which allows customization of content on the Yahoo home page, had 26 million visitors last month in the US, according to comScore Media Metrix, which tracks Web usage.

Adam Sohn, director of global sales and marketing at MSN, Microsoft's Web portal, said of Google's announcement: "It validates an approach we've had for a very long time. It's a less functional version of stuff we've had in the market since 2001."
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