Google Homepage Themes

When I opened my browser this morning, I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. I've been using Google personalized homepage for a while and today they finally did something about their painfully crappy UI. They've finally announced Themes! Right now, there are only a handful of themes, but all of them are quite nice. One little extra feature I really like is a dynamic wallpaper that actually portrays the real weather in your city! So if its raining outside, for eg., your background will show rainfall too. Nice :)

There are scores of personalized homepage websites out there - Pageflakes, Netvibes, My Yahoo, Google Personalized Homepage, AOL something, MSN something, etc etc. All of them are cool in their own little ways and compete with each other on features. And among these, the Google and Yahoo one were pretty much the crappiest looking... boxy, old-fashioned, themeless... Yet, they are the market leaders in this segment. This makes sense, considering the fact that (almost) every Internet user has a Google/Yahoo account. I, for eg, had to choose Google over the rest coz that's the only one that gave me access to all the Google services. I have my Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, weather, todo list, etc all in one place :)

Until now, the only thing that sucked about this service was the look. By adding themes, I guess they've made it perfect :)

Prashant.