I am disappointed in the latest announcement from Google: iGoogle will be retired in 16 months, on November 1, 2013.
iGoogle, also called a "personalized home page," is one of my favorite uses of Google. When I first fire up a web browser, the first page displayed (my "home page") is iGoogle. It is a page I created, using iGoogle' tools, that displays my new email messages, my calendar, my To-Do List, the local weather forecast, several RSS newsfeeds that I follow closely, and a map showing the current location of several of my friends (using Google Latitude). In short, is is a quick summary of all the information that is important in my life. Now Google is taking away this quick summary.
The announcement states:
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, so we’ll be winding down iGoogle on November 1, 2013, giving you a full 16 months to adjust or easily export your iGoogle data.
You can read the full announcement at http://goo.gl/plNTP.
Well, I certainly do expect to export my data someplace. I don't know what I will use in the future, but I do intend to find something that more-or-less duplicates the functionality of iGoogle. I know there are many such products available, the only difficulty is in finding the one that fits my needs the best. If I find something really good, I will probably write about it in a future article.
One thing I will NOT be using is an overcrowded home page full of advertising, such as Yahoo, or a brain-dead pretty picture, such as Bing. I need something that fits Joe Friday's needs: "Just the facts, ma'am. Nothing but the facts."
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