In a surprising twist - Google has decided it will compete with StumbleUpon, which is most likely being acquired by eBay.

Google’s Toolbar will now feature a “dice button” that will direct you to a page that Google believes you will be interested in, based off of your Search History. This is virtually the same functionality StumbleUpon’s Stumble! button offers.

In addition, if you add a tab named “Recommendations” to your Google Home Page, Google will offer News, Searches, Websites, Videos, and more, that it believes you will find interesting.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell - Google’s Recommendation tab sucks. I’m logged into my Google account at all times on both my work and home computers. My suggested Searches are all related to Fox News, simply because I search for “early bird” once a day, every weekday, at 0600. Has Google failed to take into account the millions of technology and gaming searches I have conducted from my home computer? It will be interesting to see what recommendations appear there - but logic would tell me, one Google account would render the same results - regardless of the PC.

I do find the link between “Early Bird” and “FOX News” as quite remarkable - the Early Bird being a daily newsletter highlighting the top stories our military should be aware of (and only accessible by the .mil domain) and FOX News being the only channel available on TV’s purchased by any branch of our government (</sarcasm>).

Google’s Recommendations are definitely an interesting feature and I am looking forward to playing with it some more and seeing what Google recommends for me. But, if it’s going to be all Fox News I’ll be deleting this tab very quickly.