Google Personalized Homepage Moves Out Of LabsGoogle Personalized Homepage Moves Out Of Labs

Google Inc. has placed a personalized homepage link on its search-engine homepage, giving users the option of adding at-a-glance information to their own start page.

The Mountain View, Calif., company launched the personalized homepage in July, making it available through its Google Labs site. The feature was taken out of test mode this week and a link to the service placed on Google's no-frills homepage.

A personalized homepage lets users add feeds to content from other websites, building a kind of customized front page. The service is offered by portals such as Google, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc. in the hope that consumers will chose them as the starting point for their web surfing. Starting with a specific portal makes it more likely the consumer will use its services first, before heading somewhere else.