I’ve been using My Yahoo! since the day it launched (or perhaps a few days later). I’ve found it an undeniably helpful homepage resource for so many years that, if it actually disappaered one day, I think I’d be in trouble. It contains all my lead stories, a lead photo that always has an emotional punch to it, and top-line weather in Brooklyn and Winnipeg (previous incarnations revealed weather in Krakow, Poland and Troy, New York). The map functionality on My Yahoo! is unparalleled and, yes, I can search through the top search bar. Yahoo! really knows me, pushing ads lately for stock photography, laptops and miscellaneous but uninteresting software.
While Yahoo! just pushed out it’s new Mindset tool, Google gave birth in July to an elegant, if too simple, customizable personalized homepage that I’m actually considering switching to. Why is it so powerful. Because of all of the RSS readers and content feed delivery systems, Google’s just works nicely. Using drag and drop trickery, I can load up my favorite blogs, websites and other thangs and then place them on the page where I want and leave out the decoration that My Yahoo! provides and, unfortunately, overuses. You can also customize the screen at any time without having to go into a special “customize” mode as you do with My Yahoo! Finally, your recent Gmail Inbox can appear, which is no small feature, especially when I’m waiting for something important to be sent to me. One feature it’s missing – the ability to box out, through colors or borders, the various kinds of content on the page. That would make the totality of the interface strong.
I’m not convinced it will change my online behavior but it might. Right now it’s a bookmark directly under my homepage button. More information about customizing Google’s homepage can be found at WikiHow and