Personalized Home Page glitch has users fuming and Google "frantic"

Many who use Google's Personalized Home Page feature - yours truly included - are trembling in fear today over the prospect of losing all of their carefully crafted settings to a bug that has Google engineers "frantic" to find a fix.

(Update: Service apparently restored for most.)

According to this story from the IDG News Service:

Angry users have lit up discussion boards on Thursday, complaining about the problem and expressing frustration at the possibility that they have lost the time they spent customizing their pages, while lamenting the hit on productivity the issue has caused them.

"I had four tabs stuffed with content on my personalized homepage. Dozens of RSS feeds, half a dozen bookmark gadgets, friends blogs, all my web presences, dozens of other gadgets. I spent weeks tailoring [it] so it was just right for my very intensive Internet needs," a user wrote on a Google discussion group. "Now it's all gone."

Another user's lament: "My web page is goooone ... nooooooo!"

However, the situation could be orders of magnitude worse: My own settings have remained intact.

Here's the official explanation from a Google blogger:

Yikes! So sorry about this everyone... but thanks so much for coming here to report it. We're now in frantic-chase-down-this-bug mode here at the Googleplex, and I hope to have more info for you soon.

For now, we're not entirely sure of this, but it's possible that changing your homepage theme might cause the problem. SO, if you still have your homepage intact, please avoid changing your theme until further notice.

The big question I know you'll all want answered is whether you'll get your homepage back once we sort things out... and the really honest answer is that I hope so, but I just don't know yet.

That's not going to sound all that encouraging to the fellow with the very intensive Internet needs.

Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent Buzzblog items. And, if you'd like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, here's where to sign up.

"Ideal Digital Kitchen" looks like a recipe for overkill.

Gates-in-space report a "fabrication" of the Russian media?

BlackBerry owes this guy a girlfriend.

Blackberry exec really doesn't get it.

Web site blues hit Fark ... and Drew speaks nicely of Digg.

Vonnegut's MIT commencement.

The Onion tees up Vista ... hilarity fails to ensue.

• Google