Google site gets personal
To spruce up its famously plain Web site, Google Inc. is offering a new option that plants its Internet search box in panoramic settings that change with the time of day and the outside weather.
The colorful graphics to be unveiled today represent the latest bit of pizzaz to be served up on Google’s home page as the Mountain View-based company caters to the digerati who want to customize everything from their cell phones to their computers.
While most of Google’s users remain content seeing little more than the company logo and the search box that has anchored its home page for nearly a decade, millions of others have created log-ins that enable them to select from a variety of features that appear with each visit. These additional bells and whistles – introduced nearly two years ago – include stock quotes, local weather and news headlines.
Google’s new package of decorations, also known as “skins,” are designed to make the home page feel even more homey, said Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president of search products and user experience.
“We feel we are personalizing things in a very tasteful and useable way,” Mayer said.
The use of more graphics also illustrates Google’s evolution from a once-pure Internet search engine into an all-purpose Web site that offers e-mail, news, photo sharing, instant messaging, shopping and mapping services.
•About 39,000 Delta employees will share $480 million in lump-sum payouts and equity in the company when the nation’s third-largest carrier emerges from Chapter 11 protection in May, according to material to be disclosed in a bankruptcy court filing today.
The cash payment for non-contract employees is based on 8 percent of their 2006 earnings, or a total of $130 million. The total equity stake the employees will get equals 3.5 percent of the company, valued at an estimated $350 million.
•A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena over Costco Wholesale Corp.’s stock-granting practices, following an internal investigation that found “imprecisions” with stock grants last year.
Costco officials said the company will cooperate fully with the federal inquiry, which it said came from the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle.
Costco, the nation’s largest wholesale club operator, is among more than 200 companies that have disclosed federal or internal investigations into their stock options practices, according to an Associated Press review.