YourMinis is a Flash-based customizable homepage product that will compete for users with a number of similar products that use Ajax – Netvibes, Pageflakes, Google, Live.com and more. This was launched by a startup called Goowy, which created a flash-based productivity suite (email, calendar, IM, etc.) last year – see here for our Goowy coverage.
Actually, personalized portals might be the perfect use case for Flash UI. Google-ability of personalized content isn’t as large a concern in most instances (especially if your data is confidential, so protected with a username/password). Back/forward navigation isn’t well supported in a lot of scenarios anyway too with the possible interdependencies of state. The same requirements that have made AJAX such a portal buzzword seem like they would contribute in this case. hmm…