Google gives users of their personalized home page a choice between different decorative “skins”.

Google has since 2005 given users the possibility of designing their own personalized home pages.

Beside the Google search field they may add news headlines, RSS feeds, weather reports, games, entertainment… Well, there is no end to the number of modules available.

In our December article What we want from Google this Christmas we argued that people should get the chance to decorate this home on the Web.

Under the headline “Give us a better mashup” we said:

“And we want it to look sexy in the Apple kind of way. Yes, we know it is childish, but this is Christmas and we want to dress up our default home page with elegant skins!”

We are glad to report that Google does now, in fact, offer skins. You may decorate your home page with a selection of themes, including “classic”, “beach” and “bus stop”. Each theme has a different banner and a related color scheme.

Design naïf

Actually, the designs are not “sexy in the Apple kind of way”. There are no gradients or semi-transparent icons, no “Woow!” factor or Prada like moments. Instead Google has chosen more “naive” or “cute” expressions: comic book or even children book styles are apparent.

Still, we like them!

Monetizing skins

Wired argues that Google may use themes for generating revenue, offering custom, branded homepage themes for corporations.

They may also invite others to design new skins.

Fast’s Alchemist

Fast’s Alltheweb search engine did this as early as in 2002. In our article Fast AlltheWeb adds Alchemist CSS customization tool we pointed out that you can use cascading style sheets (CSS)to change the design (but normally not the content) of any Web page quite dramatically. Hence: If you control the CSS-file, you control the look of the Web page.

Fast gave users control of their CSS-file, giving users the power to design the AlltheWeb home page. Or, more correctly, they gave users the chance to point their home page to a CSS file of your own design.

Fast is no longer the owner of Alltheweb, and that search site is now more or less a Yahoo! clone.

Google is using CSS when designing their themes, though. The logical next step is to start a skin competition, or — even — allowing users to upload or link to their own CCS files.