Google Updates Personalization Offering

Back in May, Google started offering personalization options. I wrote about it then and made no bones of the fact that I hated it.

Google has updated the service with some new options. And while portalized search engines aren't my favorite thing in the world, I like this updated version a lot more. It's addressed my number one concern: that there was now way for users to add RSS feeds in which they were interested.

You can try it out at http://www.google.com/ig/ . At this point you'll either see a "Personalize Your Homepage" link (click it) or a page already set to be personalized. On the left are your personalization options, on the right is the page results. (You'll have to have a Google account to save these personalization options.)

The new personalization options on the left include the ability to add bookmarks, stock exchange information, and the ability to add your own sections. Your own sections can be RSS feeds, in which case just enter the feed URL. You can also do a keyword search. My keyword search for autism found a variety of different RSS feeds available.

There wasn't a whole lot of editing you could do for the feed boxes -- basically you can control the number of items shown at a time (from 1 to 9.) You can also click-n-drag the boxes themselves around to arrange the page the way you want it.

Ah, geez. I feel so ungrateful. Yes, this is a VAST -- and I mean VAST -- improvement -- it's how they should have released it to start with. But yet I feel it's not enough. Anybody from Google who's reading this (if there is anybody), you can ignore everything after this point.

It just doesn't add up. Here we got Google and Yahoo, releasing APIs left and right. Here we got AJAX, which is the hottest buzzword since -- oh, since HTML. Here we got everybody and their Mom talking about Web 2.0 and mini applications and Greasemonkey and the power of DHTML and all that.

Knowing that a variety of mini DHTML applications are coming into being, knowing that services mashups are generating some truly useful and outrageous stuff, knowing that Greasemonkey, even hobbled as it is by its security problem and fix, can do some amazing things -- well, I can't get that excited by the fact that I can make a box of an RSS feed and drag it around a page.

I KNOW! I should be ashamed of myself! I'm ungrateful! I'm thoughtless! But at the same time I cannot help asking myself: wouldn't it be great if you had a box of local traffic condition joined with a camera view. Wouldn't it be amazing if that weather report also gave you a live doppler shot! Wouldn't it be nifty if there was some way to translate non-Your-Preferred-Language news and RSS feeds with a translator applied to your page? Wouldn't it be awesome if the stock box came with a mini, in-browser spreadsheet so you could do some cost calculation right there in your home page??

Wouldn't it??

I guess what I'm saying is this: I like the data. I'm glad we can add the data we want here. But I want tools as well. Isn't that what Web 2.0 is about?

Posted to Search Engines-Google | TrackBack