I use myYahoo as a home page. I have it customized to match my interest and needs and leave it running all the time. This also keeps me logged into Yahoo so I don’t have to log in each time I go to fantasy sports or Yahoo music.
I used to use iGoogle, but I recently discovered Netvibes and am still in the honeymoon phase with it. 
At home I used to have Firefox set to open several tabs on startup, but with Netvibes I’ve been able to reduce that number significantly – and I don’t have to remember to check sites that don’t update frequently (like my friends’ blogs) or open a tab just to say “nope, nothing new” and close it again, because Netvibes will tell me when there’s new content. I’m really quite taken with it. And I’m wondering why it took me so long to discover the joys of RSS feeds. grin
Same here. Our environment is tightly controlled and we’re not administrators on our machines, so I can’t upgrade to IE 7 or install any other browser. They’ll never allow Firefox, but I’ve asked about IE 7 and was told that it hasn’t been approved yet. Every day I hope, just for the tabbed browsing.
I’ve used the BBC homepage for the last 12 years. It has plenty of content covering all the news and sport. Anyway I’m paying for it so I might as well use it.
I can’t imagine using anything else.
SylverOne got it on one. If I’m opening a browser to quickly look up information, Google is there and ready. If I’m opening it to look at other stuff, Google is loaded instantly so it’s no harm done. I don’t see any advantage to opening a blank page over Google.
I like the visual confirmation that I’m actually connected to the internet. It’s probably a carry over from those dicey dial-up days, but if Google loads quickly, I know that I have a good connection.