As promised last year, iGoogle will no longer be available after November 1st. That's today. Google kept its promise and iGoogle now redirects to the Google homepage: http://www.google.com/webhp?nord=1.


iGoogle's original name was Google Personalized Homepage, back in 2005 when the service was launched. It was an extension of the Google homepage that allowed you to add gadgets, feeds and themes. The Google dashboard was a great way to keep up with the things that matter to you: news, weather, mail, calendar, bookmarks, to-do lists and more. These use cases are better served by mobile apps and browser extensions. In many ways, they replace iGoogle gadgets.

iGoogle in 2007:


iGoogle in 2012:


The last day of iGoogle:


The truth is that very few iGoogle gadgets were updated by their developers and many gadgets were broken or didn't work well. Google didn't create iGoogle gadgets for new services like Google+ or Google Keep. iGoogle tried to stay relevant by adding features like social gadgets and canvas view, but they were tied to projects like OpenSocial or Google Reader (discontinued).

Google Now is probably Google's replacement for iGoogle. While Google is the only one that can create cards, a Google Now API could change that. Google Now shows information that's likely to be relevant when you need it using various sources like: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google News, Web History, location services. Google also shows gadget-like cards for searches related to calculations, unit conversions, weather, your mail and much more.

If you still want to use a service like iGoogle, I recommend 2 personalized homepages: Netvibes and My Yahoo. They have fewer gadgets than iGoogle, but they're pretty good. My Yahoo even imports your iGoogle settings (the iGoogle settings page is still available).

iGoogle now shows a message like this when you visit the site: "iGoogle will be shutting down in 21 days. Be sure to take a few minutes to backup any important data you may have stored in iGoogle."


The "Learn more" link sends you to this page which explains why "iGoogle will be retired on November 1, 2013". The most popular alternative to iGoogle seems to be Netvibes. Back in 2006, I wrote a post about Netvibes and called it the best personalized homepage. iGoogle has improved a lot since then, while Netvibes hasn't. Netvibes doesn't offer a lot of gadgets, but you can still add feeds, search gadgets, weather, bookmarks, calendars, mail, to-do lists.


A site that looks more like iGoogle and supports iGoogle gadgets is igHome. It's ad-supported and less polished than iGoogle, but it's pretty good.


There's also the new My Yahoo, which has a lot in common with iGoogle. "The refreshed design gives you a sleek, tailor-made starting page to access your email accounts, calendars, stock portfolio, sports scoreboard, weather, Flickr, and of course your favorite content - from Yahoo and around the Web. You can also choose from a range of cool new themes from designers like Oscar de la Renta, Rachel Zoe and Jenni Kayne."


Somewhere between the rise of mobile apps and the fall of desktop gadgets, personalized homepages became less important. Your smartphone has better apps than iGoogle's gadgets, it's always with you and it's better suited for showing information at a glance. There's also Google Now that anticipates your searches, browsers have "new tab" pages you can customize using extensions, smartphones have cool lock screens and some of them support widgets, while wearable devices promise even better real-time updates.

The most popular iGoogle gadgets? Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Translate, Google Map Search, Sports Scores, NYTimes.com, Facebook for iGoogle, Movies, To-Do List, Google News, Google Finance Portfolios, Weather, Sticky Note. Most of them have less than 1 million users and were updated a long time ago. Their corresponding mobile apps have a lot more users and are frequently updated.

It looks like Google Now won't be limited to Android, iOS and Chrome, it will also be added to Google's homepage. Some code from a page that's tested by Google offers more information about this feature.

"Get started with Google Now. Just the right information at just the right time." That's how Google introduces the new feature. "Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places," explains Google. You can edit the home location, work location and the current location. Another feature lets you track your favorite stocks.



It's not clear how Google Now for desktop will look, but this screenshot reveals a possible implementation (it's from a Chrome extension developed by Google):


Here's the Google Search app interface for Android tablets (Nexus 10 gallery):


As I mentioned here, Google Now could replace some of iGoogle's functionality. Here's an early version of iGoogle from 2006:


{ Thanks, F. }

Last month, Google announced that iGoogle will be discontinued next year. Few people noticed a help center article which informed users that "the mobile version will be retired on July 31, 2012".

The mobile iGoogle site no longer works, even if the iGoogle link is still included on the homepage. "As Google announced in early July, iGoogle's mobile version has been retired," mentions a Google employee. Unfortunately, you can't even use the desktop iGoogle site on a mobile device without changing the user agent. You can do that in the mobile Chrome for Android and iOS or in the stock Android 4.0+ browser by visiting www.google.com/ig and selecting "request desktop site" from the menu.




Google suggests users to try mobile apps and add widgets to the home screen if they have an Android device. There are all kinds of apps for weather, news, mail, unit conversion, translation, but the nice thing about iGoogle is that everything is displayed on a single page you can could access from any device. The "Google Now" feature from Android Jelly Bean could replace the mobile iGoogle once Google adds more cards.

Google's personalized homepage will no longer be available starting from November 2013. The official explanation is that "with modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time".

iGoogle started as a custom Google homepage that allowed you to add gadgets for weather, news, mail and more. "The goal of this initiative is to bring together Google functionality, and content from across the web, in ways that are useful to our users," explained Google in 2005.

Just like My Yahoo, Netvibes and other custom start pages, iGoogle became a dashboard that gathered your favorite content from the web. It was a simplified feed reader, a platform for mini-apps and games, a great homepage for your browser. Social networks and smartphones addressed most of these use cases and iGoogle's popularity declined.

Most likely, Google will promote Google+ as an iGoogle replacement, even though it lacks many of its features. Google+ apps, themes and maybe even a dashboard-like interface could fill iGoogle's void.


iGoogle is not the only Google product that will be discontinued. Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback and the Symbian Google Search app will no longer be available, while the videos uploaded to Google Video will be automatically be migrated to YouTube starting from next month. "Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009. Later this summer we'll be moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube. Google Video users have until August 20 to migrate, delete or download their content. We'll then move all remaining Google Video content to YouTube as private videos that users can access in the YouTube video manager," mentions Google. You can manage the videos uploaded to Google Video using this page.

Google tests a new interface for iGoogle, the personalized homepage that lets you add gadgets and themes. The updated interface uses the design patterns that should be familiar by now from other Google services. Tabs are now available in a dropdown that's displayed below the search box, while the left sidebar is only used for the chat widget. There are two buttons for adding gadgets and changing the theme next to the options menu.





{ Thanks, Brinke. }

It's not surprising to hear that Google Buzz will be closed in a few weeks. Google now focuses on Google+, a product that learned from Buzz's slip-ups and became a lot more popular than Buzz. "We learned privacy is not a feature... it is foundational to the product. (...) But probably the best lesson we learned is about how to introduce a product. We started very slowly with Google+ -- in a limited Field Trial - in order to listen and learn and gather plenty of real-world feedback," says Google's Bradley Horowitz.

I'll miss Buzz because it was a lot more simple than Google+, it was integrated with Gmail and it allowed me to automatically share my favorite Google Reader posts. Buzz will continue to power the Google+ activity stream, but it will no longer be a Gmail feature.

It's not surprising to hear that Google will close Jaiku, a product acquired back in 2007 that was later open-sourced or that Google will disable iGoogle's social features powered by OpenSocial. They weren't popular because iGoogle didn't integrate with a social network.


What's surprising is to hear that Google will shut down Code Search, probably the best search engine for open source code. Code Search had a great API that was used in plug-ins for software like Eclipse. It was a brilliant way to find useful code and Google, the big proponent of open source, will close it.


"We aspire to build great products that really change people's lives, products they use two or three times a day. To succeed you need real focus and thought—thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don't work on. It's why we recently decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products," explains Bradley Horowitz.

You can still use Buzz, Code Search and Jaiku until January 15 2012. "In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search." I'm sure that these aren't the only Google services that will be closed: at some point orkut, Knol, Google Toolbar, Google Bookmarks will have to go away.

Google's personalized homepage has a new interface inspired by Google+. There's a prominent button for adding gadgets, a unified menu for gadgets that's hidden until you mouse over a gadget, an option to hide the sidebar and a bigger search box that supports voice search if you use Chrome. The links to the advanced search page and language tools page have been removed, while the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is only displayed below the list of suggestions,



{ Thanks, Tim. }

There's a new iGoogle interface that's only available to a small number of users. Google dropped the rounded corners and only shows the controls when you mouse over a gadget. Another change is that gadgets have a small icon next to the title.

Avery M., who sent this tip, noticed the new interface when visiting iGoogle Japan, but that could be a coincidence.



{ Thanks, Avery. }

The new feature that lets you add a background image to Google's homepage has a name reminiscent of Microsoft: "classic plus". When you click on the link to iGoogle, there's an option to switch to the classic homepage. Now the classic homepage has an important feature that was only available in iGoogle: themes.


It will be interesting to see if Google adds more features from iGoogle to the "classic plus" homepage. Google could add some simplified gadgets that show if you have new messages in your Gmail inbox, new events in your Google Calendar agenda, gadgets for weather and news. Since Google only shows the search box and the two search buttons if you don't move your mouse, the gadgets wouldn't clutter the homepage.

Google Search tests a new feature that lets you add an iGoogle gadget corresponding to a search result. For now, the link "add to iGoogle" is displayed for a small number of sites (BBC, New York Times, National Geographic, TVGuide.com, NPR, Flixster, Epicurious) and it's not clear if publishers can enable it.


After clicking on the link "add to iGoogle" displayed next to a BBC result, Google added BBC's official gadget to my iGoogle page. Unfortunately, Google also set a cookie value so that every time I go to google.com, it redirects me to iGoogle. Clicking on "classic home" at the top of the page solves this problem.

iGoogle added two new views for feeds: a slideshow view for photo feeds and a view that shows the headlines and a snippet from the lead story. You can change the view for each feed by clicking on the arrow icon, selecting "Edit settings" and choosing one of three views: headline only, headline and lead story or slideshow.



By default, Google shows a small number of hand-picked feeds in the sideshow view and uses the "headline and lead story" view for feeds that support Media RSS. "These new views not only create a better experience for users, but also give publishers an opportunity to more easily expose rich content, often already present in their RSS feeds. To take advantage of this new feature, publishers simply need to add images and associated Media RSS and/or enclosure elements to their existing RSS feeds. We'll then grab the images, resize them down as necessary, and provide hosting/caching. Additionally, we'll make the images clickable and display a 150 character snippet in the Headline and lead story view," explains Google.

There's a guide for publishers which offers more information about the new views. All Blogger feeds use Media RSS, so they'll be displayed in the "headline and lead story" view.

The Google Chat gadget from iGoogle's sidebar started to show friend suggestions and they're usually people you've emailed frequently. Google also shows a list of Google Translate bots that help you translate the messages from a conversation.



Another new feature lets you send some of your contacts to someone you've emailed frequently.


It seems that the suggestions are displayed even if you've enabled this option in Gmail: "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online". By default, Gmail automatically invites to Google Chat the users whom you frequently email. "Gmail determines which contacts you'll be able to talk to without having to invite each other."

{ Thanks, Bogdan. }

One of the few features that are available in Google Talk's desktop client, but couldn't be used in the web-based gadgets from Gmail, iGoogle and orkut, is file sharing. The missing feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but not yet in Gmail.

"Starting today, you can share photos, documents, and other files while chatting in iGoogle and orkut. To give it a try, just click Send a file... in the Actions menu while chatting with a friend (no download required). This feature is also compatible with the file transfer functionality in the Google Talk downloadable software, so you can share files directly from the web with folks who use the desktop version," explains Google.

You can send multiple files at the same time, but you can't select multiple files from the file picker dialog. Google Chat doesn't support transferring files larger than 100 MB.


Google Talk's desktop client is no longer updated, as Google focused on improving the chat feature from Gmail and adding similar features to iGoogle and orkut. Google Talk's homepage still links to the Windows client, but the first option is a plug-in for video chat.

{ Thanks, Niranjan. }

iGoogle didn't make it easy to change your themes: you had to visit a separate page, find a theme, add it and then repeat the process until you found a great theme.

Now it's easier to pick a theme: click on "Change theme from [insert current theme's name]" and you'll see a small list of themes. You can select a category, sort the themes by popularity or recency and even type a query like [puppy], [flowers] or [batman] in the search box.

The main reason for one of the most hated Google redesigns, the famous iGoogle update from 2008, was to transform gadgets into social web applications. The visible changes didn't make the upgrade compelling, since most users only saw a sidebar that took away some space from an already crowded homepage. Some gadgets could be maximized in a canvas view to display even more information, but not many gadgets used this opportunity in a meaningful way.


Google didn't offer an option to switch back to the classic iGoogle interface, but you can still find it if you go to http://www.google.com/ig?hl=all and in some local versions of iGoogle.

The second step of the iGoogle update is to make it more social by converting iGoogle into an OpenSocial container. That means you'll be able to add to iGoogle applications that are already available in social networks like MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn. The main problem is that iGoogle is not a social network and the "friendship" concept is vague in the GoogleLand.

Google Australia announces that the local version of iGoogle has already added the social features:

"Starting this week, we're rolling out some new social gadgets for iGoogle to all Australian users. Not only can you continue to do all the things you love to do on your homepage, but you now have the option to share all kinds of information, play games and collaborate with your friends too. (...) Your current gadgets will continue to work normally and you don't have to take advantage of the social gadgets if you decide it doesn't fit your interest. But by adding and enabling social gadgets, you'll be able to have an even deeper, interactive experience with your gadgets when you share them with friends."

But who are these Google friends? The answer is pretty simple: the contacts from the built-in Friends group.

"Friends is a group to help you organize your contacts. You can move contacts in and out of this group at any time, and this is the only group of people who can see your updates and with whom you can share social gadgets and social gadget activities. Similarly, you can see someone else's updates or social gadget activities only if they have included you in their Friends group."

For Google, friendship is a one-way concept. You don't have to invite other people to become your friends: just add them to the built-in Friends group and they'll be able "to see what you share or do in social gadgets through the gadgets themselves, or through a new feed of information called Updates, a way to see what your friends are doing on iGoogle".

An example of social-enabled gadget is "Social Photos", which shows the latest photos uploaded to Picasa Web and Flickr by your friends.


Other examples include: the "Timeline" gadget, that lets you share what you are doing and see your friends' status messages on a timeline; puzzles and games like NY Times Crossword, chess, trivia; collaborative gadgets like ToDo List.

The features will be rolled out this week at iGoogle Australia, but you can also try them in the iGoogle Developer Sandbox. Developers can find more about iGoogle's social gadgets by visiting this page.

Sometimes it's very difficult to understand Google: in 2008, Google released a great iGoogle interface optimized for iPhone, but it was discontinued one year later. "We've decided to direct iPhone users to the standard mobile iGoogle page. We've found that people hit iGoogle from lots of different phones -- we want to ensure you'll all see the same version," said a Google employee in January.

The regular mobile interface is very basic and it's only able to show feeds and a small number of gadgets. The mobile iGoogle doesn't have tabs and it's optimized for WAP phones, not for today's smartphones.

Google changed its and mind and decided to release a new iGoogle version for iPhone and Android phones. "This new version is faster and easier to use. It supports tabs as well as more of your favorite gadgets, including those built by third-party developers. (...) One of our favorite new features is the in-line display of articles for feed-based gadgets. That means you can read article summaries without leaving the page. You can also rearrange gadget order or keep your favorite gadgets open for your next visit."


To see the new version, visit iGoogle.com if you have an iPhone or an Android phone and click on "Try the new Mobile iGoogle". Google doesn't let you switch to the new version, so you need to bookmark the page. If you have a different phone with a WebKit browser, try to see if this page works well: http://www.google.com/m/ig?uipref=6.

The "What's popular" iGoogle gadget, launched last month as a simple way to discover interesting web pages, has been improved and you can now automatically add the shared items from Google Reader.

The option is disabled by default, but you can enable it in the new settings page. "Automatically submit items you share via Google Reader into the What's Popular gadget. These shares will be attributed to you. Changing this setting will only affect new shared items from Google Reader."


Google's gadget includes web pages from different sources: user-contributed pages, popular posts from Google Reader and popular videos from YouTube. You can rate the pages that you like or dislike by clicking the voting buttons displayed next to each item, much like in Digg, Reddit or Yahoo Buzz.


The gadget can be added to your personalized Google homepage, but you can also bookmark this URL. "What's popular" has less than 17,000 users, but that's probably because Google hasn't officially launched it yet.

Google Reader has an enormous amount of attention data (starred items, shared items, pages that are read or emailed), but it didn't use it to recommend popular posts, except for the "What's cool in Google Reader" feed.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Google Reader added an option to import the feeds from iGoogle, but you'll be able to use it only the first time you load the feed reader or by opening the welcome page. I assume that Google Reader wanted to help iGoogle users who need a more powerful feed reader.

The process of importing feeds is extremely painful, since Google Reader subscribes to each feed one by one. If you only have 5-10 feeds in iGoogle, it will import the feeds quickly, but you'll need to wait a lot longer if you have more than 50 subscriptions.

You can select the feeds that should be imported and Google Reader will convert iGoogle's tabs into folders.


Last year, I wrote a script that exports iGoogle feeds to OPML, so you can import them in other feed readers. It's more difficult to use than Google Reader's feature, but at least it's efficient.

Gmail's iGoogle gadget stopped working if you've enabled "always use HTTPS" in Gmail, a setting that redirects any Gmail URL to the secure version. "The Gmail gadget does not support the Always use https setting that you chose in full Gmail. If you would like to use https, please open full Gmail," mentions the error message.


It's worth mentioning that Google didn't enforce the option in iGoogle until now, even if the setting to force the secure connection was added last year. There are many incompatibilities between the HTTPS setting and Google applications like Google Toolbar, Gmail Notifier and the mobile Gmail application, which weren't design to support this option.

Here's Google's explanation:

As several of you have noticed, we made a change in iGoogle to the way that iGoogle's Gmail gadget works. If you previously set Gmail to only access your mail using https by selecting "Always use https" in Gmail's settings, you will now see a message in iGoogle's Gmail gadget asking you to open the full version of Gmail. We made this change in iGoogle for those users who want to ensure that their Gmail is transmitted using https.

We know that many of you would like to access your mail from iGoogle with https, and we're investigating ways to provide https support for iGoogle's Gmail gadget. In the meantime, you have a couple of choices:

- If you'd prefer to access your mail with https, please visit Gmail directly at https://mail.google.com/mail.
- If you'd rather get your Gmail on iGoogle with the Gmail gadget, visit Gmail's Settings page and select "Don't always use https."

I think it's great that Gmail supports secure connections, a feature that's not available in other popular webmail services like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. The option to always use HTTPS is just an added bonus, since you can easily bookmark https://mail.google.com/mail/ and use that URL. To prevent the incompatibilities, Google could add independent HTTPS settings for all the applications and services that use Gmail, so that the gadget or the notifier work even if you've enabled "always use HTTPS" in the desktop version of Gmail.

{ Thanks, Simon and Michael. }