Every morning I turn on my laptop while having breakfast and my morning latte. One click and my personalised Google page displays different delights of the new morning: a weather report, news feeds, emails, traffic information, smiley of the day, word of the day and 'how to' of the day.
Every morning I turn on my laptop while having breakfast and my morning latte. One click and my personalised Google page displays different delights of the new morning: a weather report, news feeds, emails, traffic information, smiley of the day, word of the day and 'how to' of the day.
Fifteen minutes with iGoogle has been my solid recipe for a good start to the day for the last five or six years. But iGoogle's faithful services come to an end today.
Introduced in 2005 as the search engine's personalised homepage option, iGoogle allowed users to customise their own theme and have gadgets for news, weather, email, games, and more. For many it was a dashboard bringing in all their favourite content from the web.
Also equipped with the Google search bar and other functions, it was easy to use, practical, and efficient. It made my life easier in so many ways. But now the internet search giant believes iGoogle is outdated and redundant. Google's official explanation for its discontinuation was that "with modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time".
I disagree.
iGoogle gathered the web content I wished for and delivered it in a lovely package directly to my computer – iGoogle was for me as an individual.
As much as I love 'modern apps', they don't offer that. Google Apps are for 'us' – 'my' preferences disappear.
Supposedly, Google+ is the alternative being offered to replace iGoogle. Unfortunately it lacks of certain features. It will have to do though if you aren't ready to settle for MyYahoo or other alternatives. Google was kind enough to give us a warning 16 months in advance.
In this adjustment period we could at least find a suitable replacement, export all our stored personalised data and get over it. It feels like iGoogle is breaking up with me.
After the personalised news feed service, GoogleReader, was discontinued I thought it couldn't get worse, but it seems Google is trying its best to irritate its users. I honestly don't want to know what's next.
