Proliferation of social media puts personalized homepage service iGoogle out to pasture

[Shawn Knight]

Google’s personalized homepage service iGoogle was recently shut down after more than eight years of faithful service. The search giant announced plans to shutter the service back in July of last year as the need for it eroded over time, largely due to the proliferation of social media.

In a blog post announcing its closure last year, global enterprise search general manager Matt Eichner pointed out the service was launched back in May of 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today’s web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips.

Given the widespread usage of apps that run on platforms like Android and Chrome, Google decided to wind down the service. Truth be told, iGoogle no longer really fit into the overall Google experience given the fact it wasn’t socially driven like other products such as Android, Google+ and YouTube, just to name a few.

Users were given a full 16 months to adjust and / or export their data if necessary. That time came on November 1 although interestingly enough, Google didn’t give any final warning before closing it. Those visiting the old iGoogle URL will instead be redirected to the search engine’s traditional landing page.

This is the second major Google service to shut down this year. On July 1, the company closed Google Reader as usage reportedly declined over the years. Coincidentally, Reader launched just a few months after iGoogle in 2005.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/54556-proliferation-of-social-media-puts-personalized-homepage-service-igoogle-out-to-pasture.html

 

[oldikes]

Honestly I liked igoogle. Google is my homepage, has always been my homepage, and probably will be for a long time, and being able to throw a couple of widgets down on it was nice...

 

[Guest]

There's a goofy sucker at my work that's mad as hell about this.

 

[gooderguy]

I loved it, mostly because I used different computers on a regular basis, so it was great to have all my links and gadgets wherever I would log in. As for final warnings, I got a warning every day of October that it was shutting down.

 

[NTAPRO]

Good times...

 

[Guest]

Personally, iGoogle made google part of my day. Now it's less so. Here's the problem that Google haven't considered: it's now forced me to find alternatives, which means I most likely will have to change my search engine. That's google's bread-and-butter, right there.

So, for me, it's taken away the reason I first started to have Google as my homepage. Now I use a competitor; and their search is good enough for my purposes.

 

[Guest]

Yes guys, finally a company that has the guts to prove that the future of mobile is the web, outside the walled gardens of the native app stores. Now the world can see what can be achieved by talented designers (coders with a designer touch). I'm so happy to see the enthusiasm around this kind of apps, because new web apps are emerging (like Startific.com ) that are offering some special user interface like never seen before!

 

[Phillip Seni]

Hehehe. I didn't even knew iGoogle existed. if I was made to guess, I would likely say that it was an attempt by apple to troll google.
I use my yahoo webpage and bing on my desktop computers.

 

[Guest]

This "news" article might as well have been written by Google.

iGoogle is closed becasue it doesn't fit Google's desire to sell as much personalized advertising as possible. Had nothing to do with how useful it was or that "gadgets" do a better job.

The only thing "gadgets" do better is track individual usage. So the users can be more closely targeted and therefore the eyeballs are more valuable to advertisers.

 

[Guest]

iGoogle was good and useful. iGoogle was still good and useful last week. The rationale about its shutdown is that Google want to sell us something, maybe not so good and useful for the user, but sure better and most useful for Google bussines.

 

[Guest]

They took from us the fox and his little house, and his friends who join him to drink tea

This was my beloved theme for iGoogle and I don't have any alternative that do such a nice thing.

Googlemakes recently sad moves.. first New shitty Maps, second Google Reader off and now iGoogle off.. this makes me very uppset ((

 

[captaincranky]

What fascinates me is how all the Google addicts whimper when Google cuts their supply line off.

All of this has parallels in the US government, and I suppose many, or even most others.

Conservative governments routinely cut off "social entitlements, to the poor", while routinely and simultaneously, giving gobs and gobs of perks, to their rich cronies and contributors.

So, it would be fair to say, that the "Google regime has taken one huge step toward the right". I would be interesting to note an accounting of what the google board of directors, has in the way of political persuasions. My guess is that they're "closet republicans", who are finally getting the nerve to "come out".

More annoying than the cutoff of the free social media drugs, (to me at least), is how I can no longer log into my Gmail account, without withstanding a full page of banner ads, on which Google is begging me for MORE personal information.

I deal with Google in my own way, and I'm determined to get what I want from them, with as little suffering through the obligatory sales pitch(es) as humanly possible. (perhaps, "sales barrage", or even "sales bombardment", would be terms closer to the actuality of it).

(1): So, if I search for something which I'm going to use again, I bookmark it.

(1a): Although, sometimes I won't bookmark it, preferring instead to use their service again, but without clicking on a "sponsored ad).

(2) If it's humanly possible, I never click on a sponsored ad anyway.

For example, even if I see a Google / Newegg "sponsored ad" for something I happen to be looking for, I ignore it, and head to Newegg via bookmark, thus not allowing Google to profit from the click.

It's really naive for so many of you to think the ANY revenue compensated search engine is a "social entitlement". If it were, then your governments would be providing your home pages. And then wow-wee, we'd have to be suffering through a withering firestorm of bellyaching about that.(n)

Wouldn't y'all just be real comfortable with using, "NSA.gov", as your search engine???

And know what? Since they wouldn't be collecting any ad revenue, they'd have to fund it by raising your taxes.