Recently, it was announced that iGoogle will be shutdown by Google. The service allows users to create a personalized Google page with photos, news, weather reports with the help of widgets.
iGoogle has quite a few fans and that is probably why Google is retiring it with an advance notice of almost a year and half. The service will be shutdown on 1st November, 2013. I am sure some would miss iGoogle but the time for personalized homepages with widgets has probably passed.
iGoogle: An idea from a different time
As Google explained in their post, iGoogle was launched in 2005. It was a time when almost all online activity happened through the browser and on personal computers.
A homepage with widgets showing news, tips and weather updates is not exactly useful at a time when most people use apps on the smartphones to access this information.
iGoogle is not alone, Google will also shutdown 3 more products
Google Talk chatback which could be used to embed Google Talk onto websites will be shutdown. It will probably be replaced by Meebo bar which does the same thing a lot better.
Google Video is also now being completely shutdown with all videos being transferred to YouTube. This will be done automatically and users are not any longer expected to download and upload their video from Google Videos to YouTube.
In a significant death knell for Symbian platform, Google has announced its discontinuance of the Symbian Search App. This means Symbian users will search on Google only through the browser.
Google is not new to closing down services to concentrate on lesser but more connected products. It has closed down quite a few products which include the popular image editor Picnik and others like Aardvark, Google Desktop and many more.
Did you use iGoogle and will you miss it? Do drop in your comments.
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