Market leader uses 'fusion' to stay on top

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- At last week's first-ever Google ''Factory Tour," the buzz centered around the unveiling of the Google Personalized Homepage and the soon-to-be-launched Google Earth. But curiosity was keen even before the doors opened, welcoming the press to the Internet's hottest yet famously circumspect facilitator.

The Google Personalized Homepage is a response to user feedback, said the company's consumer Web products director, Marissa Mayer. It is the first component in ''a strategic initiative, a group of projects inside of Google, that we refer to as fusion," she said.

Mayer, who leads the fusion development team, added: ''These projects aim to fuse together Google's functionality along with content on the Web into a single unique way to access its content."

The pristine cyberscape of its classic home page, Mayer said, ''is one of the things Google users really love," and it will still be there. The personalized home page is another option, she explained. The user will be able to easily toggle between the classic and the personalized alternative, where user-selected information -- including news, movies, weather, stock market quotes, Google Maps and Gmail -- can be displayed. It is the latest of dozens of features released by Google in the past few years to enhance its fast, effective, popular and now very lucrative Web browser.

Yet the feature is reminiscent of customizing facilities already offered by portals run by Google competitors Yahoo and Microsoft. Mayer maintained that it differs in ease of set up and its ''crisp, clean, 'Googley' look and feel." It also centralizes multiple Google features for the user, making access less cumbersome to Google offerings like Picasa, Google Image and Froogle.

Setup guidelines for the Google Personalized Homepage are at www.google.com/ig or on the link from Google Labs.

Access to third-party offerings is limited on Google's new personal homepage, compared to what is available on My Yahoo, for example. Mayer said that more choices will be added soon. ''We envision in the next one or two months offering full RSS support so we can accept any RSS for you off the Web to be displayed on your personalized home page." RSS gives users continuous access to content of various Internet information providers.

Yahoo's response to the news was predictable. ''We launched My Yahoo nine years ago and last year redefined personalization again by providing access to millions of content sources from across the Web," said Yahoo spokeswoman Helena Maus, mentioning Yahoo's ''long and successful history of personalization." She added that Yahoo is the number one personalized Web page in the world and the world's largest RSS reader, citing a March 2005 Media Metrix survey.

While the Google Personalized Homepage may not be exactly groundbreaking, Google Earth, due to be launched in a few weeks, is breathtaking. Developed for Keyhole, which was acquired by Google in October 2004, this 3-D enhancement of satellite photos will allow the user to soar above the earth and zero in on just about anywhere. The view is luscious and detailed.

John Hanke, Keyhole general manager, said that due to limited resources, initial focus was on the United States, but ''now we have access to a lot of additional resources and really smart people. We have been able to dramatically expand the scope and add a ton of international data."

Indeed, if the pioneering of gigapixel images demonstrated by engineering and research vice president Alan Eustace becomes universally available, reading the front page of a newspaper flung at a far-distant doorstep on your computer monitor will be a click away.

Talk of Google's plans remained sketchy. Half-jokingly introduced as a ''beta test" for both sides by chief executive Eric Schmidt, the Google Factory Tour was chiefly an exposition of the culture and mission of Google through presentations and question-and-answer sessions led by Schmidt, cofounder Sergei Brin, key executives, engineers, and team leaders. Google's large, industrial chic screening room was the venue, with guards posted in the halls to curb potential wanderers.

Besides ''organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible," the dual goals of innovation and ''monetization" engage the cogs of this cyber factory.

Sales, marketing, and advertising are prime concerns, with functions such as AdWord and AdSense utilizing Google technology to connect advertiser to customer. Google presented its approach as advertising with a heart, striving for less intrusion and including not only big business but the small guy on its list of clients.

Google's ambition is to make money while spreading it around; to be the search engine to transcend all search engines, delving into the most elusive recesses to discover what every user wants. Yet as innovation brings growing sophistication, Google's stated axiom of doing no evil is bound to be compromised unless extreme care is taken.

Unprecedented prying open of individual privacy is a fait accompli, and technology, however stunning, promises further intrusions.

Schmidt has elsewhere advised user caution, and he claimed that privacy is a priority. ''We provide as little information as possible, and if personal information is posted, is yours, and you request to take it off, we will be happy to remove it," he said. Sergei Brin said that one of the functions of Gmail ads ''is to educate users about their privacy and that computers are indeed processing their mail," something that may not always be understood because it is not always visible.

Yet for all their ambition, Google was humble about the vast amount of work yet undone. ''It will take, current estimate, 300 years to organize the world's information, but that might be too short an estimate," said Schmidt somewhat anxiously.