Presumably everyone has seen this now (seeing as there are plenty of screenshots on Flickr and links on del.icio.us), but Google is trialling a customisable homepage.

http://www.google.com/ig allows you to select from a number of headline providers (including Gmail and Slashdot) which will be placed on the Google homepage, which you can then drag-and-drop re-order using cross-browser Ajax magic

All of the headline are clickable and take you through to either the linked website story or, in the case of Gmail, directly through to the email page although it’s not framed by the rest of the Gmail interface, so is only useful for reading your mail, not performing actions on it, in which case you’ll need to get back into the main Gmail interface. I’m sure that this is a change which is in the works though.

All in all I’m quite impressed. It’s certainly a move to a portal, but by allowing it to be optional, and then so easily customisable it’s already better than many of the alternatives.