Google's new Personalized Home allows you to switch the traditional, simple, empty Google search home page into a more sophisticated (customizable) personalized page with things such as access to weather, stocks, GMail, and so on. If you haven't seen it yet, go to Google's main page (www.google.com) and click on the Personalized Home hyperlink on the top right corner.

But what attracts many people to Google is the simplicity and emptiness of its traditional page – or in other words, what keeps many people away from other home pages such as Yahoo! is how busy they look.

Google's simplicity has been one of its differentiators. And keeping the ability to turn personalization on and off is key to maintaining simplicity. Otherwise it will become another busy page…

ceo