NetVibes gets £8m funding boost

NetVibes, a French company attempting to challenge the supremacy of Google by allowing users to personalise their news and other web-based information, has raised more than £8 million in additional funding.

The site is a free-to-use, custom-made web 2.0 home page. Essentially, it is a malleable alternative to RSS feeds and having to visit several separate sites to get the content that you want.

NetVibes enables you to set up your own page with favoured RSS feeds, news channels, web mail and search, or other functions such as language translators borrowed from third-party sites.

Users can move things around and determine how much, and what kind, of information is on display on their home page - even how many tabbed pages are available.

NetVibes found initial funding in March from a group led by Index Ventures. Index also supplied this latest round of funding in partnership with venture capital firm Accel.

Created in 2005, Netvibes already offers services in French and English. Services in Spanish, German and Chinese are expected soon.

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