How long will Google and Yahoo continue this game of one-upsmanship? I don’t care, as long as we keep getting new search tools.

First is the new layout. Google ditched the tabs view, added a link to its Froogle shopping search engine, plus a More… link. Pretty basic stuff, but the new layout is getting a lot of buzz.

More important are two new projects being conducted in Google’s research lab. First up is Google Personalized, which allows you to create “personalized searches” after you have created a profile based upon your interests. I tried it out, and for now I’m underwhelmed. The technology certainly shows promise, but how do I know that the results are truly personalized? I’ll keep fiddling with it.

Google Web Alerts shows much more promise. The interface is identical to Google News Alerts, and the idea is the same. Just enter your search terms, and Google will send you an e-mail every time it indexes a page containing those terms. Google is just now catching up withGoogle Alerts on this, but it’s good that it finally did.

Also a welcome addition to the home page is the What’s New, where you can see all the new stuff on one page. Nice to see Google finally putting this information in the same place.

Update: Here’s a review from Danny Sullivan.