Mark Evans

I've received several e-mails from Google with the following message:

“Google would like to include your RSS feed(s) in our personalized homepage. This developing product allows users to add useful and interesting RSS feeds like yours to customized versions of the Google homepage. We wanted to let you know that we expect to add your RSS/XML feed content (title and item links) to current/future versions of this product. As a result, users will be able to view links to your content on Google personalized homepage — driving increased traffic to your site with no extra work on your part.”

Anyone else getting this message and, more important, what does it suggest about Google's RSS and portal strategies given the focus on a “personalized homepage”? So far, Google's homepage has been pretty low-profile. I haven't visited the home page much but it now lets you add all kinds of content. This includes an “Add Content” feature in which you can “Create a Section” by punching in keywords or RSS feeds. It produces several choices that you can easily add to the homepage. Google is no Yahoo or MSN yet but there are signs of progress.