It was always inevitable that at somepoint the sacred Google homepage would change, and at the Google Inc. Factory Tour they unveiled some new personalisation features that allow you to turn the homepage into more of a portal style interface.

Here you see Marissa Mayer,  Director, Consumer Web Products introducing the new personalisable interface.

The ability to add different feeds and customise the interface in a my.website fashion is giving us Altavista inspired deja vu. The outcome of AV's updates go down as one of the worst mistakes in search engine history, they tied in with a rebrand and a noted loss of focus on their core services. That mistake was what really opened up the playing field to Google in the first place. Lets hope Google will be able to learn from history and not try to over stretch themselves in the same way.

To demo the service and create your personalised interface visit: http://www.google.com/ig

You will be required to have a Google account in order to save your settings.