Start pages galore

Yuga muses on the proliferation of startpages, online bookmarks and news aggregators, looking into several “vying for the title of the ‘Start Page of the Year'”:

Start.com – Microsoft’s laid-back effort at Web 2.0
Live.com – looking spiffy from a recent revamp but much better than Start.com (and why does MS have two of these?)
Google Homepage – Google’s attempt to look like Yahoo back in 1995,wanting more pageviews perhaps just to get back at MySpace?
Protopage – full-featured but too cluttered, a little ugly on the design and not very good on usability. Supports multiple pages though.
My Yahoo! – reminds me a lot of Geocities
Pageflakes – newest baby in town but more promising but always offline half the time.
Netvibes – very neat and simple yet packs a lot of features; my bet for the Start Page of the Year.

Yes, there are a lot more out there. But it was an altogether different ballgame eight years or so ago. Check out what was live.com–now Windows Live–circa 1998 (from Pinoy.tech.blog):