Google's Personalized Home Page Shows Promise

I tested Google’s new personalized home page features today and I definitely think there is great potential. I currently use My Yahoo as my main “home page” and portal to stocks and news (not as a feed reader though – I still feel FeedDemon is the best RSS reader out there). To be honest though, I don’t use any other Yahoo services, but I do use Google’s search engine, Google alerts, and I’m migrating my Hotmail account over to Gmail (albeit very slowly). As Google integrates more features (how about the portfolio tracking functionality similar to My Yahoo?), I can easily see it becoming a strong force in the consumer portal competition. The current features of the personalized Google are limited (Google News, movies, Gmail, weather, basic stock quotes, word of the day, quote of the day, and news from Wired, Slashdot, BBC, and New York Times) but give the user a nice overview and really a taste of what’s to come. And as usual, it’s done with the satisfying air of Google simplicity.