I saw this a few months back, it's very interesting. The future of A9 hasn't been revealed yet, and that adds to my curiousity of the future.
However, Just recently, about a week or two ago, google very quietly released personalized homepages, with the ability to add your gmail account and customize your news sources into one. I'm sure that's just a start of the page -
http://www.google.com/ig
I wonder what the IG stands for though...