Excite was my start page for a couple of years: not a great search engine, but an innovator in personalized content. That was several years ago, however, and My Yahoo! has been my start page for awhile. People who have stuck with Excite have told me that the service has been gradually shrinking over the past few months, and at the end of September At Home, Excite's parent company, filed for bankruptcy protection, and the @ Home broadband services were sold to AT&T. One has to expect that Excite will soon disappear, with Dogpile taking over the search function and iWon handling most of the portal components.

There are still many ways to get personalized news; My Yahoo! is quite good, as are NewsIsFree, moreover, and the new syndic8. There are also desktop apps such as AmphetaDesk and Headline Viewer.