Laptop Mag Verdict

Like most things Google, this personal page is clean, simple, and very text-heavy.

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Like most things Google, this personal page is clean, simple, and very text-heavy. Upon sign-in, you can populate a basic page by ticking check boxes for items such as your Google Calendar and Gmail, bookmarks, local news, movie listings, and even games. Google uses multiple tabs to make your homepage into more of a file folder of resources to which you subscribe. Most of the sources are simple RSS feeds, but this approach works very well. Google lets you search for feeds in the search box to add to the page. Recently, Google added the ability to telescope headlines out to reveal the lead paragraph of text. You can browse news details without even clicking through to the source.

While still plain compared with the alternatives, Google offers themes and has introduced slicker modules. One of the chief advantages of using Google is the diversity and depth of add-ons you can add to the pages and drag and drop into just the right configuration. A new library of interactive widgets sports an astonishing range of mapping services, chatting services, and even games. More than any other personalized page, Google's feels closer to a full-blown operating system.

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