Google Blog: on personalised home pages

Google Blog: A method to our madness: "A method to our madness: 5/19/2005 02:58:00 PM: Posted by Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products, and Jessica Ewing, Product Manager

Does Google have a strategy, or are we just a bunch of mad computer scientists running around building whatever we want? Today this question gets an answer: we've launched our personalized homepage via Google Labs. It's part of a strategic initiative we refer to as 'fusion' to bring together Google functionality, and content from across the web, in useful ways.

The personalized homepage is a complement to the existing Google homepage - not a replacement. Keep using the original Google homepage if you want to. (We expect many people will.) But if you're keen to organize and customize your information, take a stab at designing your own homepage. You can add Gmail, news, stocks, weather and more. Plus you can add great content from websites like the BBC and Wired. We're incorporating feeds from just a few other sites today, but we envision being able to accept any standardized feed very soon."

Google to Expand Overseas Business

BizReport: "Speaking at Google's first annual meeting since going public, chief executive Eric E. Schmidt told shareholders he anticipated that the company, which gets almost all of its revenue from advertising sales, would see a shift that would reflect its increasing global presence. The company's latest financial results show that it generates slightly less than two-thirds of its revenue domestically.
'This week, we got the necessary permit to open an office in China,' Schmidt said. 'As the Internet penetrates these countries, Google's market share will follow.'"

GOOGLE Buys Dodgeball.com,

MediaPost MediaDailyNews: "GOOGLE SAYS IT SNAPPED UP Dodgeball.com, a two-person start-up that created a mobile messaging service to enable users to alert friends as to where they're socializing. The service received plenty of buzz in New York City. The two guys who founded the company did so while they were New York University grad students. Dodgeball was uniquely promoted by the talented new media creative Doug Jaeger and his company, The Happy Corp. Dodgeball.com allows users to broadcast their location and send text messages to groups of friends. It can be used as a dating or hookup service, or just to let friends know which bar or party you're going to. It's the perfect social lubricant for 20-somethings and teens, those hard-to-reach, hard-to-target folks. "

Google Film Reviews: results

Mike Skweir writes at Slashdot: Google Adds Movie Ratings, Times and Reviews " He wanted to find out more about the movie 'Kicking & Screaming'... so he Googled it his results show several reviews, movie ratings and the ability to search for a theatre in the area. He adds that by entering your zip code, it returns movies on in that postcode area.

Example: Google Reviews: Kicking & Screaming (2005)