I'd maintained a personal home page with handy links and utilities for years, but gave it up when iGoogle etc... came along. In my current attempts to withdraw as much as possible from The Allseeing Eye of Google, I've resurrected a personal homepage. I found a copy of my old one from 2003 on a backup CD. Oh, the ugly. It burns. So, I created a new one from scratch.
After using it for a day or so, I'm liking it a lot better than the heavy iGoogle homepage with all of the widgets and media. The source code for my page is 6K. It loads some external media, but not much. Quick. Lightweight. Personal. And no tracking by anyone, unless I choose to do a search or follow a link to a third party site.
Previously, Google learned a little bit more about me every time I opened a browser. They knew where (and when) I was. They learned what I read. They learned what I did, by tracking any clicks or activity. And they get to feed me ads for the pleasure. Now, it's a simple, lightweight, personal page. No tracking. No ads.