If Google Made a Yahoo-like Start Page

Google will avoid a front page like this like the plague. Besides they've adressed the needs of the people who need everything on one page with their cutomization option. I have a friend who has his Google page customized to include lots of junk. If you really want it, you can already have it.

yeah, make a poll in your topics, i think more people will vote than reply

I've found that Google's personalized home page is 1000x better than the My Yahoo! product. My Yahoo! can't get my RSS feeds right half the time. It's a real pain, and I rarely use it anymore.

I think that they should keep it as is for basic search, because if people want anything more, they have that "Personalized Home" thing, complete with news, weather, horoscopes, custom RSS feeds, etc. that you can move around in a modular kind of way, realigning things to your liking. Heck, it's even got tabs (though I find moving between tabs is kinda slow)

I tried using Yahoo's page a while ago, and I just couldn't keep it as my homepage.

My homepage is always set to blank on my machines, and I just didnt really find the information on Yahoo's Portal page any useful to me. So I would assume if Google ever did one, I would find it useless to me as well.

I don't ever see myself switching from a simple clean (fast loading) search page. I use other google things some of the time, but if and when I want them, I go to them, and don't need them cluttering up my search page. In fact as I use firefoxs google search box I hardly ever even see google.coms front page in any case.

I'm sure some users would appreciate this style of Google Portal, but I would think that the majority of Googlites would stick to clean/fast/information seeking.

Matt

I use google as my home page just because the first thing I do when I turn on my computer is search for something unfamiliar to me. The layout now is perfect for me...not to mention, kinesthenically, my muscle memory will always go to that middle toolbar to start my search and it would be damn near impossible to retrain my hand :)

I actually wish Google had a start page. They could make it optional - but I really like the centrality Yahoo! offers and use them for things like finding movies, looking up people, or researching buying a house - Google is losing out.

I think most of us would prefer it the way it is now. I mean, it loads fast and...seriously, we don't need a start page to tell us what to look for.

As others have noted, you can create a customized Google page much like you can with My Yahoo. For searching purposes, I rarely actually visit google.com and typically just type a search in the box within Firefox.

Little did I know that Mozilla was making big bank off of that until John's story a week or two ago.

I prefer the current setup that Google has. They should have a separate URL for a customized homepage rather than dump alot of information onto the front page. I think the most appealing thing about google has been their front page which has a few links and just the search bar. I find Yahoo's approach a bit too "noisy."

They have customizable homepages, and you don't need to log in with your ID for it either. It's just a matter of cookies I think.. or some other memory technique. Anyhow, when I hit Google, I get sports and entertainment, news, stock, weather, horoscopes etc. You can customize it to have much more if you like...

I personally believe in giving people options, and I'm all for what Google already has right now.

I didn't even notice that it was YouTube and not Google Video.

haha I noticed that. yea they would have news videos instead of YouTube videos.

Oh, and I think Google would use Google Video instead of YouTube. ;)

It's not bad looking (the mocked up Google Page) but I too like the simplisticness (is that a word?) of the current Google main page.

Simple is better! Well I guess sometimes it is.

I really like Yahoo's creativity in their applications.. they only lack the brilliant user friendly functionality (AJAX/JS) and search algo... If they could muster up those two things, I may turn into a Yahoo Fanboy (and stock holder :D)

Google already has a decent, customizable start page:

http://www.google.com/ig

Google uses a simple start page because they want it to be simple. It's always been that way, and it's something they've tried really hard to keep the same.

If you want modules on the page you can create your own custom "Google Home", and honestly there's so much crap on Yahoo's page that I never use it.

The notion that Google would make more money if they did a site like this is kinda crazy, because it'd be a pain in the ass to use.

john see if you cant make a poll for the site, which one people would prefer. Personally, i like the simple search as it is.

I think Google should get rid of the too simple start page, they can earn alot more money if they create a page like yahoo....

people will notice the links and click it.. without searching it on google itself. more profit for google i think.

great idea

I actually like that design

I saw it on TechCrunch a few days back, to be honest I'd prefer it than the current.

For basic search, keep it as it is.

If you sign-in to Google there is a portal page of sorts.

I did see this a couple of days though I must say I did not like it too much - cant ever imagine Google this way

That looks so good

yea this will never happen

Hmm... that page looks familiar... Pretty funny design actually.

With all of the google tools I use, I kind of wish they would make a centralized portal-style page like Yahoo's. It would be convenient having windows for all of my google tools on one page.