Google gets personal with iGoogle

GOOGLE INC is stepping up efforts to allow its users to personalise how they search the Web, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all approach to search it already offers.

Google's personalized home page now goes by a new name: "iGoogle". It was the company's fastest growing product in 2006, according to Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, but still trails far behind Yahoo's MyYahoo, which has 50 million monthly unique visitors to iGoogle's 7 million monthly uniques.

Officials told reporters at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday of moves to allow users to share their own writings, photos, lists and other creative efforts, as well as to give consumers personalised views of the Web through use of their geographical location and search history.

The world's top provider of Web search services is bringing together the more idiosyncratic approach to finding information on the Internet under the umbrella term "iGoogle", the new name for its enhanced personalised home page services.

"We want to personalise the traditional notion of search," Sep Kamvar, lead engineer for the personalisation push, told reporters.

Reinventing the classic Google.com home page-with its simple, uncluttered design-the company is introducing features that range from colourful new Web page designs to helping users publish their own creative content.

Google is borrowing or reinventing ideas that have already become popular features on many social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and Photobucket, where users are encouraged to share their own creative work with friends.

To help users create personalised features on iGoogle, the company introduced "Gadget Maker", which allows any user who knows how to upload a photo and fill out a simple Web form to publish their content without knowing computer coding.

Google introduced seven templates for creating personalized "gadgets"-publishing features-that include tools for publishing photos, sending virtual greeting cards or creating personal profiles or lists of favourite songs or films.

"I look at personalised search and I think it is one of the biggest advances we have had in the last couple of years," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president in charge of search and user ex- perience, said.

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