Personalized Google: What did I do to deserve this?

Because I’m an uber-nerd, this evening I was playing around with Google maps API. The service sent me a key to my Gmail account. The next time I opened a browser window, there it was - personalized Google! This is a great integration of the Google search page with RSS news feeds, weather, quotes and movie times (screenshot). This is awesome.
Remember EPIC, though? The adoption of RSS news readers has not really caught on yet. Part of the reason people are reluctant to subscribe is because they do not have feed readers. Technology intimidates them, and rightly so. The beauty of the personalization page is its simplicity. Never do you even see the letters “RSS.” Let’s move forward a few years to when Google may have all your news preferences logged. It will know what you read and will filter content to suit you. Not bad. But what happens when Google is the ONLY service that knows you that well? Will it lose market share because Google will know your personality better than Amazon?
At any rate, I’m excited about this. It’s different from that messy Yahoo! personalization page that I tried out when I was about 15. I was turned off to a “personal home page” unitl now. Leave it to Google to prove me wrong.