Google is for the first time promoting its Personalized Homepageon 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.
