All these AJAX homepages seem to provide nothing more than Google Search, RSS Feeds, and a weather applet/gadget/widget.
Big deal! My browser provides all these pieces of content for me in some shape or form, either through built-in functionality, RSS feeds, or bookmarks (remember them?).
There's only value in an AJAX homepage if you can do something more with the components available. A mash-up if you'll (to use a Web 2.0 word).
Assuming you can get the AJAX-world to settle down, and decide on the right way to do AJAX, then you have the problem of the "walled garden", i.e. who owns the customer ? Let's say I wanted to "mash up" my GMail client, with my Plaxo contacts, and Flickr photos, so I could create a not -too-far-fetched super-web2.0-mail-client. I would need a environment that makes those APIs available , a simple
-to-use programming language to foster a development community/ecosystem, and a slick AJAX GUI builder. All online, otherwise you would remain dependent on in-house development staff.
Sorry. I don't see this happening for a while yet. We still have a couple of hurdles to overcome: a common system for user authentication (Hailstorm? anyone?), webservice standards (SOAP that works seamlessly across multiple vendors/platforms?), and reliable CSS2 across IE and Firefox to name a few.
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