I am a big fan of RSS feeds and aggregator pages. That is my way of staying informed. iGoogle and My Yahoo! are information aggregators from arch-rivals Google and Yahoo! respectively. Now, lets us examine both of them.

Visitors:

iGoogle had around 7.5 mil. Unique visitors (UV) in Oct 07 compared to 25 million UV

Speed:

iGoogle wins hands down when it comes to load times. Loading speed on My Yahoo is good but it can’t beat iGoogle.

Modules:

Both allow us to be able to search modules/gadgets. Yahoo! does not have an API for module development by end users. Most of the modules are designed by Yahoo! team. On the other hand, iGoogle allows users to design their own modules which have lead to availability of millions of gadgets. Also, both allow users to use RSS feeds as modules. But, all RSS modules in My Yahoo are also available in Yahoo Mail. The integration is really nice.

Design:

We can divide design into three categories:

1. Module/Gadget design:
   iGoogle gadgets are mostly designed by developers with little or no concern for maintaining harmony of the page. Most of the gadgets are clumsy and mediocre at the best. On the other hand design of My Yahoo! modules is really nice and it fits the overall look and feel of the page.
   Also, My Yahoo! has many options available to users those are missing in iGoogle. My Yahoo! allows users to define the timelines and number of feeds in a module with option to select combination of text, video and messages.
   Another very useful feature of My Yahoo is the preview reader. This allows users to be able to read the summary or the full story without leaving the page.
2. Page design:
   My Yahoo pages are hands down beautiful. I liked the ability to have a small search box. It frees up more screen space for modules. iGoogle on the other hand takes up as much as 1/3 of the screen space for search box. Both have plenty of resize and column options.
3. Theme:
   This is another strong point for My Yahoo!. Available themes are beautiful and actually enhance readability. On the other hand most of the themes on iGoogle are childish.

All points in the design round go to My Yahoo!.

Ease of Use:

This is not a tough call. And, My Yahoo! seems to have edged out iGoogle by a large margin. I liked the fact that you can preview/add a module, change color/layout and change the size of the search box without ever leaving the current page. Check out “The New York Times” module/gadget on both and you’ll realize the difference in both of them.

The Verdict: