Google offers personalized home page

updated 8:07 p.m. ET May 19, 2005

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc. on Thursday introduced a new option that will enable visitors to display more information on the online search engine leader’s bare-bones home page, a departure that pushes the company a step closer to operating an Internet portal in the mold of rivals Yahoo and MSN.com.

The feature, available at labs.google.com, allows the millions of Google users worldwide to select components tools located underneath the search engine’s hood and display them on the main page.

For instance, a user could choose to have the weather, an e-mailbox, movie listings, top news stories, stock market quotes, and driving directions displayed whenever they visit Google’s home page and sign in using a personalized account. The company unveiled the feature during a media day hosted at its Mountain View headquarters.

Displaying a potpourri of information on the home page marks a significant change for Google, which has always greeted its visitors with little more than a box to process a search request, along with a few tabs to navigate to other features, such as news and shopping.

The company decided to give users the option of adding more bells and whistles on the front page because it believes it developed a “critical mass” of products that present helpful information to visitors, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer products.

Despite the shift, Google isn’t trying to persuade visitors to spend more time on its Web site, Mayer said. “We are still interested in getting people off our site to the places that they want to go (online),” she said.

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