Google..Yawn...Launches..Yawn..Personalized Google

Of all the blog postings on Google's launch of a personalized home page, I think TechDirt is the only one grokked it correctly:

Google.. Yawn... Launches.. Yawn.. Personalized Google

At the media-only PR show today named the "Google Factory Tour" (to maintain the "cool, funky" Google mystique, no less), Google announced the launch of My Google (not its real name), a way to add personalized content first pioneered years and years ago by CRAYON, Excite, and My Yahoo. My Google (not its real name -- it's really called Google Fusion) is one of the first labs launches without the "Beta" moniker; perhaps the reason is that it's not really that revolutionary. Sure, there's drag & drop, but the functionality is severely limited. Unlike its Yahoo counterpart, there's only integration with one of the other properties that would actually use personalized data, Gmail. Blogger, Google Groups, Picasa, and Orkut are all woefully missing. Furthermore, Google has only chosen 4 sources for news -- RSS support (and Atom since this is Google) will be available "soon". Sure, all of these features may all be on the roadmap, but why not wait until more of these were integrated to announce something exciting? It sounds like the Google "Factory Tour" is much like the simulated factory tour in Hershey, PA -- just like you get to see a simulation of how chocolate is made, today, reporters saw a simulation of Google product development.

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