The killing of iGoogle

[Mr. B]

Maybe I'm the only one around here who uses iGoogle, I wouldn't know.

It's been my homepage for five, maybe six years, and does just about everything I want from a homepage, with customizable widgets for news (including financial) and sports RSS feeds, a nice Slashdot widget, calendar, weather and thousands of other possibilities. Of course, it also ties in with search and Gmail.

However:

iGoogle will be retired in 16 months, on November 1, 2013.

Their explanation:

We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for something like iGoogle has eroded over time...

Seems silly to me. I have a My Yahoo! page, but it's nowhere near the same league. Unless I can find a good substitute (or they change there mind), I think I'll be lost for a while.

[Johnny Deformed]

This is the first time I've heard of it.

[whisper]

I used myyahoo and later iGoogle. I really just don't use it the same way I did since I got my tablet. I use that for most of the things that I used iGoogle for. I'm sure I'm not the only one who no longer spends the amount of time that I used to spend on that page than I used to.

It's an expense, and if it's not generating the use that it used to - I can't fault them for killing it.

[E]

I used to use iGoogle a lot at work to create a dashboard of items that I cared about (personal email, news, weather, task lists, etc.). My iPhone and iPad have more than filled that role now though. I haven't used iGoogle in about 2 years.

[Mr. B]

Originally Posted by whisper

I used myyahoo and later iGoogle. I really just don't use it the same way I did since I got my tablet. I use that for most of the things that I used iGoogle for. I'm sure I'm not the only one who no longer spends the amount of time that I used to spend on that page than I used to.

It's an expense, and if it's not generating the use that it used to - I can't fault them for killing it.

Fine.

But for those who still use desktops or laptops, and don't use tablets or smartphones much, I think it still matters.

[E]

Originally Posted by Mr. B

Fine.

But for those who still use desktops or laptops, and don't use tablets or smartphones much, I think it still matters.

This is one reason I hesitate to develop lasting reliance on any Google products. They are quick to kill things, often out of the blue. I got somewhat burned when they killed Google Wave. I had invested a good bit of time in that, and I also had been advocating it to a lot of people.

I don't think core services like email and calendar are going anywhere, but anything else can vanish at a moment's notice.

It's also a lesson in data ownership. Be sure you have offline copies of anything web-based tool made by Google.

[no driver]

You're making it sound like they flip a switch without warning and won't let anyone get their stuff, and I can't remember a case where that's ever happened. They're giving more than a year's notice in this particular case.

You can be afraid to adopt services offered by Google if you want to, but when they decide to end a project they always give plenty of notice. And when they end services that host content that a user has created, they provide a way to preserve that content outside of the service.

I would make a decision to use a Google service based on whether it seems useful to me, not whether I was afraid they would discontinue the service in a few years.

[ADoubleDot]

Originally Posted by Mr. B

Fine.

But for those who still use desktops or laptops, and don't use tablets or smartphones much, I think it still matters.

try switching to the Chrome browser. a lot of the features in iGoogle seem to be integrated into the "new tab" feature on Chrome

[urysohn]

I use this as my home page but I don't use it nearly as much as I used to since:
- I don't need it for my iProducts, which is all I use at home
- my work computer force defaults to a company page so I need to consciously select it from Favorites. I'm more likely to directly jump to one of the other bookmarked pages I was eventually going to land on anyway
- Other than the top news and sports headlines, most of the other widgets I have on my page have stopped working over time and I haven't bothered finding replacements.

[mlschop]

I used iGoogle until I realized that I wasn't using it for widgets, but almost as an RSS reader, so then I switched to Google Reader. Of course they stripped out the social aspects of Reader that me and my friends enjoyed, but I still use it.