A day after Halloween, or roughly 16 months after announcing its shutdown, Google has finally killed iGoogle. What remains of the personalized homepage service is a link that just redirects to the search engine's home page. The move was part of the company's service trimming brought about by new interfaces within the Chrome browser, Chrome OS, and the Android platform.
The iGoogle service might not be as popular as the demised Google Reader that generated a lot of buzz before it was terminated but social media might be the common cause of death of the two services.
Its primary purpose was to have a personalized homepage where users can customize the search page with news feeds, useful widgets, and information that they want to have at one glance. While this option is still available at My Yahoo! and My MSN, there are speculations that these might also be heading to the digital graveyard soon.
"With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we'll be winding it down," explained Google's global enterprise general manager Matt Eichner in an official blog post in July 2012.
"Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people's lives," Eichner added.
Google Support posted an official iGoogle retirement, explaining "What Happened to iGoogle."
"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," the article stated.
The service had 7.1 million users as early as 2007 and was available in more than 40 languages. In 2008, the iGoogle traffic represented about 20 percent of the volume of searches of Google. When the Google+ was rolled out two years ago, the search engine company announced that the social features of of the personalized Internet portal were switched off.
Google clarified that user data are still available directly through different products such as Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Tasks, Google Bookmarks, and Google Finance.
"There are a number of desktop alternatives available. If you're a fan of Google Chrome, the Chrome Web Store provides a similar range of options like productivity tools and applications to check the weather. In addition, just like iGoogle, you can personalize Chrome with a theme," Google suggested though its blog.
