8 ms·

The difference is personalization. I never would visit a portal site like yahoo, but every morning I look through my Google Now feed. Relevance matters.

mevile 9y ago
You could actually customize excite.com a great deal. You could choose your stocks, your weather with a zipcode. You could make a box with your favorite links, you could drag around the various boxes and news feeds, add RSS links. The whole deal. It wasn't personalized content created automatically based on your search history though.
ec109685 9y ago
Yahoo's portal is personalized (but not explicitly so).
pjc50 9y ago
Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?
- cyxxon 9y ago
  Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there, my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it, though).
  - hammock 9y ago
    Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget, etc)
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct control on what gets shown there. Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list as you encounter them - that's just wrong. You don't even get a benefit of being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are available...
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Not on a desktop PC!
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  It was my homepage for the longest time. Such a great service. Sadly now I have to come to HN and hope there's something of interest here when I have 15 minutes to spare.
- andygates 9y ago
  Oh, that was the good stuff. RIP.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  After it went away I spent a lot of personal time building something similar on a unix box running at home. Still miss some of the features I could never replicate though.
dredmorbius 9y ago
http://www.freshnews.org http://www.freshnews.org An early RSS-based aggregator -- but you could (and can) choose your feeds, if you like.

mevile 9y ago

You could actually customize excite.com a great deal. You could choose your stocks, your weather with a zipcode. You could make a box with your favorite links, you could drag around the various boxes and news feeds, add RSS links. The whole deal. It wasn't personalized content created automatically based on your search history though.

ec109685 9y ago

Yahoo's portal is personalized (but not explicitly so).

pjc50 9y ago

Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?

cyxxon 9y ago
Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there, my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it, though).
- hammock 9y ago
  Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget, etc)
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct control on what gets shown there. Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list as you encounter them - that's just wrong. You don't even get a benefit of being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are available...
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Not on a desktop PC!
SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
It was my homepage for the longest time. Such a great service. Sadly now I have to come to HN and hope there's something of interest here when I have 15 minutes to spare.
andygates 9y ago
Oh, that was the good stuff. RIP.
FussyZeus 9y ago
After it went away I spent a lot of personal time building something similar on a unix box running at home. Still miss some of the features I could never replicate though.

dredmorbius 9y ago

http://www.freshnews.org http://www.freshnews.org An early RSS-based aggregator -- but you could (and can) choose your feeds, if you like.