Google home page news

Several months back I noticed that Google would allow me to set up a custom home page with specific feeds of my own choosing for what sort of news and information I want to see on a semi-regular basis. That capability may have been in place for quite a while, but that just happens to be when I noticed it and gave it a whirl. I set up a few basic sections of interest to me, including a couple blog feeds.

This morning when I visited my Google home page I noticed an obvious change in that the blog feed entries now show a clickable (+) next to each. (There is also a date or time after each entry, but that change is of lesser significance to me. MINOR UPDATE: As of early February it now appears that they've already eliminated the date/time stamps.) Of course, I figured that clicking a plus sign would expand that particular feed item to show something of the entry itself and that is indeed what happens. They don't show the entire entry, but it gives a good preview.

I like the feature, but I suppose it has pros and cons for the source bloggers in that now someone may preview an item, find it of interest, and then be more likely to click to go view the actual full entry. However, it's just as likely, perhaps even more so, that the preview of an item will convince a Googler that it is not of interest and therefore not worth the visit to the source page.

For me, it greatly helps when viewing SciFiWire entries because I can't always tell from their headings exactly what an item might be about. The Google preview feature lets me get a better idea of whether I want to find out more or not. Since SciFiWire pages are laden with broadband targeted content they load extremely slowly over my dialup connection, so a method of quickly previewing an entry is very much appreciated.

Here's an illustrative screen shot...