Slashdot Mirror
Google Killing Off Mini, Video, and iGoogle
New submitter Trashcan Romeo writes "Three years ago, it accounted for 20% of all visits to Google's home page. Two years ago, Lifehacker readers voted it the best start-page service. Today it was announced that iGoogle will be retired — or in the company's parlance, 'spring cleaned' — on November 1, 2013."
Google Video is also getting the axe this summer. It hasn't accepted new videos since 2009, and all of the old ones will be migrated to YouTube. The company is also getting rid of Google Mini, Talk Chatback, and their Symbian search app.
Really. I pinged a friend who uses iGoogle, and he's just like "Meh".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I've been using iGoogle since '05, I feel like this is a loss but I'm already moving over to Google Reader and getting used to the new interface... at first I'm "Meh" about Reader, but I dont hate it, yet.
With most major browsers having the url bar also usable to enter your search queries, I haven't had a need to go to a google homepage in a very long time. Be it igoogle or the normal homepage.
All videos on Google Video will become private YouTube videos. Will this see the return of the Google Video archiving effort by Archive Team, covered in a previous Slashdot story?
I will miss it. I've used it for quite a while. I suppose I can use something else, but it works well and does what I want.
Great. How am I going to get to see more than one task list at once without iGoogle? Stock google tasks is barely functional as it is.
Reading over the sunset annoucement, I don't think they realize how people really use it. It's not a mobile service, and it isn't simply a redundant link to stuff, it's a dashboard of what I'm interested in and a portal to all of Google's other services. It's also not just a homepage, it's the page I have open on my desktop all the time.
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
It's a damned good non-YouTube search engine. It's where I go when I need something other than what the YouTube community does best. And, it's not just for porn. I tend to find the unlisted songs from YouTube that way. The songs that YouTube has taken down. Also, it helps with documentaries and such. Try YouTube with some of those topics and you'll get nonsense. Google Video shows 'em to me.
I've used my iGoogle page as my homepage for however long it's been around - five years? six? It'll suck having this go away, but it's been obvious for a while that Google's all about killing off anything they offer that they've been unable to monetize.
What I find funny is their suggestion that, as an "alternative" to iGoogle, we should either move to using Google Play (um, what?) or start using Chrome as a browser. Yeah, how are those iGoogle replacements again?
I'll find a non-Google replacement, just like I have whenever they've discontinued their other offerings I liked.
#DeleteChrome
I'd keep that.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's a damned good non-YouTube search engine.
I read the featured articles, and it appears Google is not retiring Google Video Search. It's retiring Google Video hosting so that it can focus effort on Google Video Search: "As we said nearly three years ago, the Google Video team is now focused on tackling the challenge of video search."
After a quick BING search I found NetVibes which with some modifications had my homepage up and running mirrored from iGoogle. Fuk'em, google can lose my business... Back to Firefox too.
I use igoogle to read webcomics. I don't know another service that I can access from anywhere and just load rss feeds onto.
Cloud computing is always heavily promoted and it does have many advantages. However, it also has one significant disadvantage -- your computing environment is at the whim of whomever is providing said service. If you come to depend on a service and the provider cancels it, you can try and find a substitute or simply accept that you are out of luck.
These services that Google is dropping, are not critical, but they could have been. Not every cloud has a silver lining, or even a chrome one.
iDon't know, maybe Google's simply replaced the i with a +?
Google started killing off the mini years ago when they stopped releasing software updates for it, and stopped updating the hardware.
It's kind of disingenuous for Google to say the mini has an 'adequate' replacement. Google Custom Search doesn't give the admin nearly enough control. There's no way to guarantee all your pages will get included in the index, even if you're on a paid subscription. No keymatch functionality, no regex exclusions, no freshness tuning. And the Google Search Appliance costs over 10x the cost of the mini (starts at $45k instead of $3k). It's hard to call that a suitable replacement.
The problem with the mini is that Google couldn't make enough money on it. It basically started out as a min-GSA, with less beefy hardware and a lower license page limit. Customers would buy it, deploy it, and forget about it. It worked great. Google thought that customers would migrate from the mini to the GSA, but I think what happened is once they had the mini they stayed with the mini for their public website, and many never saw the need to spend $$$$$ to upgrade to the GSA for enterprise search.
At one point a few years ago, Google released a "VM edition" of the mini/gsa for development use. They quickly realized that VM was the wrong way to go because without the pretty hardware and cables they couldn't justify the cost of the GSA to customers, so they quietly cancelled the VM and all mention of it. Wish I had kept the copy I had downloaded.
I've been using iGoogle since it first launched and it's really the only reason I use many of Googles services and also the only reason I bother logging into Google at all.
Very disappointed in honesty I think I'll probably end up giving Bing a try simply because I can't think of anything else to replace it with.
I use iGoogle. I will miss it. I hope they will have something to replace it. IMHO, Google services always have the feel of something half finished. They are kinda like the anti Apple.
I've had iGoogle for 3 years and have just recently begun getting into the habit of using as my "daily paper" instead of relying on the ever-accurate Facebook =P now they're going to close it? Can they just hire me to update it into the latest hot Web Property? ;-(
How about MyYahoo? iGoogle was a knockoff of 90's "personalized web portals" anyway, so why not go with the original?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I don't use many of the other gadgets/toys. Well, Weather Underground, Woot watcher, Google Finance are useful, but I could live without them.
Are there alternative sites that provide a similar function?
I use iGoogle as my landing page. I have my email, slashdot, new york times, BBC, the weather, a sunlight map, wikipedia, and a pet hamster all on the same page. Where else am I going to get all that the second I open firefox?
My kingdom for a donkey!
iGoogle. Having all of your RSS feeds, your email feed, calendar, TODO list among a few other things. It is very useful and effective in what it does.
There are several websites that post interesting items, but not enough to visit them every day. The RSS feed makes it were you don't have too. Combining it all with stuff you do use every day (email, calendar, todo list) makes iGoogle extremely useful.
What I find is most people have tools at their finger tips that they have no idea how useful that tool actually is and therefore don't end up using it.
iGoogle is useful, but like Google+ most people have no idea how to actually use it. (at least half-intelligent people are actually figuring out how to use Google+, that just doesn't seem to be the case for iGoogle)
That ignorance is a loss for us all.
I just keep waiting for the spring cleaning notice for GWT.
I've been using iGoogle as my home page forever. Considering the broad range of services Google provides now - email, chat, voice services, etc. - you'd think they'd want to provide a central hub. I've got mine set up for some basic news headlines with sports, hollywood, and Fox filtered out. I also use it for local weather, Google Chat, and to manage account settings. I think I'll miss the news aggregator function the most.
Any suggestions for a good generalized news aggregator? Something that will draw from a variety of sources and can be customized for topic preferences.
And they are giving you a 1.5 year warning that these non-critical apps are retiring. That should be expected. I don't expect my phone to last 5 years. You shouldn't expect an online service to last more than 5 years. They retire for good reasons. Something else is there.
You miss the point. Yes, these are relatively trivial services, but that doesn't mean that cloud providers can'tor won't drop more important services. You maynot expect an online service to last more than 5 years, but most businesses do.
but why do google do this? Why don't they keep them around, and improve them, or roll them into something bigger?
Seems to me that if something isn't an instant hit, they kill it off eventually.
I've used iGoogle for years as my base place for reading news and checking up on things when i get to my computer, and always keep it open as my first browser tab..
Does anyone have any good suggestions for a replacement? I have a good while to find one so I suppose I might even be able to write one by then, but might as well see what exists already.
I'll miss spring scape, watching frog & ladybug go through their day was great.
Now what will my Mom use for a homepage? It checks her gmail, stocks, weather, and offers a translator. What will she do now? TELL ME GOOGLE, WHAT WILL SHE DO NOW?!
I've used iGoogle for years because I spend most of my day in a corporate environment. It put everything I needed on 1 page... Google... which I was almost expected to visit regularly. So I'd pop it up, I could see my email, the temperature, CNN news, and even slashdot. In fact, I read this story first through iGoogle. Can I use Chrome and its extensions to do this like they suggest? No... my web client is fixed, and I can't add extensions at work. The idea that we're moving away from web based apps to browser based, local plugins it insane to me. What is this? 1999?
If you have access to a web server, there are a number of ways to set something similar up yourself. I've done it at seandiggity.com using WordPress + Aggregator theme + some extra plugins. There are definitely simpler ways, but I like the flexibility of WordPress's widgets.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
I use iGoogle too. Looks like a lot of slashdotters do. Seems like odd timing. They just changed the layout recently.
They're suggesting Chrome-only solutions that you have to install locally, so they have none of the advantages of a webpage which I can easily use at work, at my parents' house, at my house, etc., change in one of those places and be reflected everywhere, and so on. And a separate mobile-only solution (it never occurred to me to use iGoogle on my phone; I already use apps for that).
Disappointing.
and that's its search results. The thing that Google used to do superbly was have the cleanest and most efficient interface for searching of any search engine: A single line search field with a "Go" button. They fucked that up with autocomplete and cookies and javascript and yadda yadda yadda to the point where I can't even use it anymore. I switched to ddg.gg and have stayed with it even though its results suck compared to google's. I just couldn't take google's front end anymore.
All of these reasoned arguments for the practical application of igoogle are fine, but I ask you: Where will my Hamster live? Where?!?!
I spent about 15 minutes and was able to get netvibes.com to look almost *exactly* like my iGoogle page.
I've been using iGoogle since, well, EVER since... I couldn't imagine doing without that kind of aggregator service as my homepage.
Anybody looking for a replacement for iGoogle should definitely give netvibes.com a try. It's worth the few minutes it takes to duplicate everything.
Google killed Desktop Search too that was the best search tool for Windows OS. Now they kill the best home page. I am sure a small company will step in with a replacement for iGoogle if Google plays nice or is it the new MS?
Now I'm fearing for Google Reader, which I use all the time. Google hasn't updated it for years, so it's just a matter of time before it is "spring cleaned".
Fn bean counters ruin everything they touch. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
I think Google must drop more than half the stuff it starts. It does make me especially confident to rely on Google service.
I agree, why drop this? Has it not been successful?
As a matter of fact, the tech site forums are loaded with people bemoaning the demise of iGoogle.
One of the things that Google is really good at is analytics. They KNOW how many people are using iGoogle.
That leads me to believe they are shuttering it not because of lack of use but rather because TOO many people are using it. They obviously believe they are losing "clicks" or as some others have stated, they are trying to herd us into using some bastardized version of Google+ they have yet to release.
Google has been pretty good about living up to the whole, "Do no evil" thing so I'm hoping we all wake up in a few days/week and read on our shiny new netvibes.com homepage that Google has changed their mind about dropping iGoogle.
Dropping iGoogle might not be totally "evil" but it will definitely make me think twice before using any other new Google-branded services they release in the future.
i can easily search for content over 20 minutes long on Google video, last day, week or month .. :(
i think these filters should be made to work properly on Youtube.. dammit. gonna be stuck to working with Youtubes
shitty filters
Google is really fascinating people. Created by himself with a staff is developing with each passing day. You Can have a look on google.
http://www.vayoog.com/notebook-yedek-parca.html
Monk Google Vayoog sits in the Yedek desert. Each day, he draws a few symbols in the sand with his Parca staff... some days, the rain comes, and obliterates much of his work; but he will rewrite it, better than before. Someday, he knows a long dry spell will come, and he will finish developing. The code will be complete, and the world will finally know the search engine it has longed for. Well, that or a really snazzy breakout clone.
You seem really withdrawn and distant. It's that gossipy jerk Facebook, isn't it?
Our iGoogle times were great. Remember how we discovered new things with Reader, how we built our lives around Calendar? And wow, you were really good in search!
But you've changed, Google. I don't mind that you're heavier, but this diet is like cutting off your legs to lose weight. And frankly, you're kind of clingy.
So let's just be friends. I'll still see ya around Maps, and maybe we can catch an image search sometime. Your tracking will always be with me.
Sorry I missed you at Plus, I came by but no one was there.
This has nothing to do with "cloud computing". This is simply a website that decided to stop offering a service.
It's a free service, there's no SLA, these things happen.
I've been an iGoogle user for over a year now, and My Yahoo for years before that. I love(d) both because I could have the same homepage on any computer, with quick access to my RSS feeds, top 5 websites, simple weather, etc.
So when I got the news that iGoogle was going away, I was pretty dismayed. I left My Yahoo because of the abundance of advertising and wasted screen space.
After a little searching, I found that MSN offers a service nearly identical to iGoogle without the plethora of widgets. It's called "My MSN" and is at http://my.msn.com.
The interface is the same as the other portals, and I've currently got my Slashdot RSS feed along with about a dozen others, weather, favorite links, and local movie times. It supports "tabs" (multiple pages) but I don't use them.
Just yesterday I decided to give up on iGoogle, as I hated the fact that I couldn't use it while using a different YouTube account in the same browser. Much as I don't mind them logging and datamining everything I do (to some extent), I don't like them to correlate my calendar, my email information AND the silly videos I might want to watch. So the Google/YouTube consolidation did it for me, and I returned (unhappily) to My Yahoo. Too bad, as I really liked having Google Calendar and its to do list so readily available. Now with iGoogle being retired I really can't regret my decision. But Yahoo Calendar is ugly and its to-do list sucks. Netvibes looks promising, so I'll give it a shot.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
I don't have a smartphone anymore. I prefer just normal dialing on my phone. I know too much about technology and the government to trust a smartphone.
But iGoogle is my homepage. I use it everyday and I go to it all the time. I have four iGoogle pages setup for my use. One for work, one for travel, one for everyday, and one for the gamer in me. I think that chrome is a great browser, but is still far away from ideal...meanwhile iGoogle is ideal.
So much for "progress".
Please sign the petition to save iGoogle.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/dont-kill-the-igoogle-webportal.html
And let anyone you think might be interested in saving iGoogle about it.
Thank You.
... I read about this *from* iGoogle :(
I'm kinda sad. iGoogle has been my collection of news and rss feeds, available from any computer and everywhere, which has been a bliss as I have to use multiple computers at work, and 3 at home too.
iGoogle has been my home page for years as well. I check my email, news, sports, slashdot, woot, weather, traffic, movie times, network tools, etc. all in one interface. I'm going to be very sad to see it go. Those that never used it missed out on a good app that could be used to consolidate a bunch of information in one place.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be a good replacement?
Who are you to say what is the right way for someone else to use them? while google+ could be argued to have some social rules on behavior - due to interaction between people, igoogle is purely giving the user what they set it up to give them... how can they do that "wrong"?
Those that never used it missed out on a good app that could be used to consolidate a bunch of information in one place.
The alternative view is that those who never used it missed out on yet another opportunity to inform Google of their personal preferences and usage patterns...
To many people iGoogle was irrelevant because they don't see the point of signing-in to search the web and don't use other Google services.
I understand that it's a business decision and I don't begrudge them that, I'm just not interested in taking a lot of my time to develop a presence on their social network only to have them decide that it's not making the kind of revenue they want and killing it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Managing News is fairly easy to setup and configure yourself. It is LAMP, free, and open-source.
http://managingnews.com/
I prefer iGoogle, but I'll probably move to MN now; especially because I always wanted to tweak the fonts & display for use on my own mobile devices. Google is giving me the push I needed, even though my to-do list is big enough as it is. At least they're giving me time to get it done. Thanks Google!
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
So I start using a Google facility and then they kill it? I was happy to switch away from my.yahoo (got tired of yahoo constantly trying to add crapware to my machine) once I got iGoogle all set up. I guess I will search for a non-google replacement.
So I can replace iGoogle with netvibes, we've established that. I'd now like to know how to let google know how displeased I am about their decision to cancel iGoogle. Does anyone have a link I can use to rant at google? I looked around google's help pages for a little while, with no success :-(
It seems time for a petition. Anyone caring for setting this up?
The only difference between iGoogle and a dashboard you could write yourself is how it looks. Just yoink all the CSS while it's still up, and make yourself a replacement.
My wife uses iGoogle on her macbook in Safari. Now I suppose she will just use the apple provided desktop widgets.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I have found iGoogle very useful. Having one tab where I can quickly check email, calendar, weather, docs, to do list etc.and then launch from there only if needed has been very efficient. It means I don't have to use notifications so can ignore stuff when until I quickly want to check then see everything with one click. It is the same on my desktop, laptop and all the different Windows, MacOs and Linux computers in different browsers at work with no hassles or involvement from IT. And it is launched when ever you start the browser or click on the home page icon.
The thing is that not enough people used it for Google to be bothered supporting it and the current trend is to stand alone apps because there is no point in doing anything else on phones and tablets. Sure I can stick a lot of different applications in shortcuts on desktops or run apps in multiple tabs but it will be much less inconvenient. Having everything automatically open in one tab with a sensible layout was the whole point.
Interestingly I tried changing my homepage from iGoogle to Google Search to see what life will be like without iGoogle, but when you try to automatically open search as your homepage it still defaults to iGoogle, part of Google's attempts to promote the service.
Must be coming up to the Q2 earnings conference call.
Q1 cost me Google Code. And cost them some stock price.
Those of you, like me, who use iGoogle and are mad that Google's dropping it with no good alternative, please voice your complaints on their product forums and raise the volume a bit: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/3SDRsOMBonA/discussion
one really good thing about igoogle was that I never saw it censored by sysadmins. what I've found is you have to use the services that they use but don't tell you about and this was one of them.
personally I won't miss google video but talkback is a shame and isn't mini a major shock for websites that use it?
A blog I run for the wealth
It's things like this that make me - and possibly small businesses - nervous about email and the other google apps products
While it's unlikely they'd ever kill gmail, it makes it harder to make a case to bet the farm on google. Shame there's no really viable alternative to email with a half decent web interface (animated ads flickering in the corner of my eye annoy the hell out of me and I don't want to jump through ad-blocking hoops on every PC I ever use).
So iGoogle might not be a big product, but it's visible enough (unlike maybe some of the smaller products they've killed) to make potential users pause.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Just wondering if getting rid of iGoogle, which I was never a fan of but which didn't seem heinous either, has anything to do with the "Google Now" app on Android.
How big of a moron do you have to BE Google?
Seriously, you SUCK as an advertiser. Actually seriously suck. You are the reason your own services are killed off. YOU.
How can you not possibly monetize iGoogle with such space? HOW?!
Why haven't I got a job yet? Eh Google? Why? I'm obviously smarter than your entire advertising team. And sadly I don't think I am being sarcastic anymore.
MN looks polished. You sure its a iGOOG replacement? Looks more like a reader.google.com replacement.
I skimmed the website and its basically "feedonfeeds" from 199x or reader.google.com from 200x with a optional map display, written in drupal.
Is there more to it that I missed in my skimming?
If not, as a test you could set reader.goog as your home page, and if you catch yourself saying "a map would make this better" then do the MN thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I've been using iGoogle since what feels like forever... back when they only had the teahouse and a few other themes. You won't believe how crazy are about the teahouse theme... just go read the comments everytime Google screwed up the theme or layout:
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?dpos=top&root=%2Fig&url=www.gstatic.com%2Fig%2Fthemes%2Fteahouse%2Fteahouse.xml&type=themes
There are already comments bemoaning the end of iGoogle.
If anyone at Google reads this - why kill iGoogle? It is the only reason I stay logged in with my Google account. No iGoogle? No more constant logging in. No more tracking for you etc.
First, there was Google's decision to stop new uploads. Second, there was Google's decision to delete all videos in one fell swoop, which was reversed. Third, there is Google's decision to copy all videos to YouTube as private videos and then delete them. They will be private on YouTube even if they were public on Google Video. AT might take issue with the fact that they'll be taken private, and a lot of uploaders aren't going to be around to make them public again.
I've only dabbled with it to date, but I spend a lot of time working as a Drupal developer so my understanding of it is decent. It is Drupal server software; what is called a 'distribution' of Drupal, or a flavor. If Drupal were Lego, then those 'Boeing 747 Lego-thangs' would be like a specialized Lego 'distribution' akin to one derived from Drupal; and released as open-source.
I hadn't really thought about it, but it is probably more like Google Reader than iGoogle when you really think about it. Also, like I read later in the thread NetVibes might make a better, more-close-to-iGoogle replacement. Still, for tinkerers Managing News is kinda neat.
Feed sources come from whatever RSS feeds you input. I don't think it comes with any, or if it does, they are *minimal*. As I recall it is super easy to allow it to use Google/ Gmaps to do a little geolocation of the news articles, so you can look at a pinpoint display, to see I don't know, trending airplane crashes or something.
If you wanted to re-publish some of the collected feed-nodes by editing and publishing it yourself, then MN becomes more valuable.
There's a Drupal module (that is not difficult to add), which recreates the little iGoogle squares. Oh wow, I haven't seen this in ages, it looks perfect. It is called HomeBox. https://drupal.org/project/homebox. Now I think you're ready to provide your own cloud solution which competes against both iGoogle and NetVibes. Well, NetVibes *is* pretty slick, so you'll need to pour some elbow grease into, but you've got a good start I think.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Netvibes is blocked by my employer's firewall ;-(
I love my igoogle page. I've got slashdot, google reader, my calendar, my docs, my email, headlines, etc. It's nice and convenient. So stupid of them to get rid of it.
iGoogle is my homepage. It is a very convenient way to display everything I want to see as soon as I open my browser. It has the news, the weather, my email, my calendar, some of my favorite rss feeds and much more. It is the perfect jumping point into the web.
I signed the change petition. I doubt it will change Google's mind, but this is the internet and I need to rant.
http://www.change.org/petitions/google-don-t-kill-igoogle
I attended a workshop with the person who developed iGoogle. She's a fantastically interesting person who creates works of art that often incorporate computers and programming, like code that sings itself.
iGoogle wasnt about signing in to search the web. In fact you don't even have to sign in to use iGoogle as an RSS reader or any of its many widgets.
It's a pity Google's video search now only searches YouTube. The one thing I now use Bing for is it's cross-site video search. Yesterday I was searching for a clip of Bond flying Little Nellie. Turns out the best one was on TCM - Bing found it, Google didn't.
Here is Google's contact number, give em a ring and let them know that they shouldn't be canning iGoogle. Anyone have an email address of someone higher up in the organization?
United States
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001
I'd love to see a percentage (killed projects vs total google projects), attached to these periodic google "spring cleaning" stories. The total would have to be somewhat hypothetical, but ... I just use gmail, reader, and 'drive', and the top nav bar is way crowded from my perspective. I'd bet most goog.users would just make vastly different housekeeping decisions. ... Never forget: features and choices are a /cost/. (Though, all those terms are relative)
LOL
I would have used iGoogle - and probably many others - if Google hadn't decided to f*ck up its appearance and behavior few years back. There were lots of flames on Google forums.
The iGoogle of 5-6 years ago was probably the best start page I ever had: fast loading, easy on eye design and most importantly useful.
The later iGoogle (with the unmovable bar on the left) looked like meh and some things also started behaving the same.
But it was all for the sake of the progress - as Google developers always tell us. And now they kill it.... LOL. They should restore from back-up the older version, make the "no more f*ck-ups" promise and I'm pretty sure many users would go back to using it.
P.S. I hope they wouldn't drop the old HTML-only GMail view. (Link to it they have already removed.) Or I would have to start looking for a new e-mail service too...
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Would be if it was true, but its not even close. Google's video search searches the web, not just YouTube.
Doing a search with terms "James Bond" "Little Nellie" on Bing I get 33 results, 25 of which are from YouTube, and none of which are "from TCM" (by the site -- actual root source of the video, maybe). Same search on Google Videos gets "about 67,400 results", from a wider array (from just the first few pages) of sources than Bing's,
Another alternative to iGoogle is www.protopage.com . Check it out!
On a related link: "Iran Reverse Engineers Cobra Attack Helicopter"
I don't even know what Google Reader is let alone want to jump ship to it. I don't want to read more stuff, that is for sure. I like that iGoogle organises the stuff I need to look at so it is less daunting. This is a counter intuitive type of progress for the Google.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Let's fork it back into Google Labs! I don't care it it's made a little more technically demanding to setup.
Google should be nationalised and all the code put GPL so that we can fork things we need and they don't have to try and "monetize" away all usefulness.
Stupidity is its own reward.
What's in line for the next "spring cleaning"? Gmail? Sure! And while you are at it, don't forget to spring clean that pesky search engine, which shows some idiotic unrelated results every single time I search for something that is not in a kindergartener's vocabulary!
I've switched to Netvibes.com - their free service is pretty good - better than iGoogle in some ways.
-ted
Netvibes is very similar to iGoogle
I am checking out Netvibes as a replacement.
-Kinsey
Everyone here is a cunt.
(Re-post because I posted in the wrong thread)
I have taken to cloud storage in a big way and mostly quite like the convenience of it. But increasingly I am now forced to react whenever someone sneezes in Mountain View and decides to shut down something. I was affected by Google Pages to which I had links from all over the internet. I had some software downloads on that and the new Google sites is useless. It is not so much having to move my files, the problem is that other things link to it. Documentation refers to it. In the case of my free software, I could not be bothered to move the web-pages over to my server so I just deleted the whole lot. So, I you needed normal map correction software, Lightning fast image sharing through IM you are now missing out on my free software.
I used Buzz a little, it got shutdown too. Not too much of an issue but I was considering to put effort in creating a decent following on it. Glad I didn't. Also glad I never jumped on the Google Wave bandwagon either.
However, I have used iGoogle from the moment it became available and right until today that is my dashboard. The default home page on all my computers.
In one view I can see my appointments, emails, slashdot, bookmarks, chat, Google menu bar and recent google documents. Where else can I have that?
So, now they shut that down and I am forced to change the way I do things to their time schedule. And this is really the tip of the iceberg. On Google+ I have a personal and business page. Growing a following takes effort and time but what if they shut that down? In a smaller sense the cloud is also starting to show the downsides.
They are forever "improving" the user interface experience. This means that from one month to the next I am never quite sure how to access my Adsense control panel or other account details. Stuff changes constantly, layouts and styles change and it affects my productivity.
There are real benefits to local software. Although unused, my old Office XP will still run on my windows 7 machine without me having to re-learn how to use the software all the time and forever hunting through menus to find back a feature that I am sure is there somewhere.
I used to blame Microsoft for never sticking to anything (Enter Silverlight) but in all honesty, their OS is remarkable. It will still run very old windows code and I think they do deserve to be recognized for that. In contrast, my new Galaxy S3 android phone will no longer run a $6 racing game I purchased for my Google Nexus One two years ago.
In short: The big providers are their own worst cloud enemy because they keep changing the platform and rules of engagement. And don't give me the "But it is free what do you expect" argument. It is not free at all. I pay for it with information about me and exposure to adverts.
current trend is to stand alone apps because there is no point in doing anything else on phones and tablets.
Interesting comment. Definitely not what you are hearing from those pushing cloud solutions for everything.
Since I never intended to move away from stand alone apps, only using online anything when it added something for me, your comment rings true with what I have expected and still expect regardless of the hype.
Makes me think of suits and ties...if a gentleman sticks with medium sized lapels and medium width ties, others (larger or smaller) will come in and out of style, however the medium level ones will never be OUT of style. Thus a more effective investment for anyone without an unlimited source of funds.
I envision purchasing a new Linux embedded device this year that will not be limited in any way for a device of its footprint. With the promise of HTML5 I should be able to find / develop apps that will run whether I am connected to the Internet or not. With WIFI I will have phone access in 80% or more of the places I am. The obvious exception being while traveling, but even in that example I can use the device stand alone and sync back up when the next connection opportunity presents itself.
All without an additional monthly fee beyond my Internet access!
I expect it will have as much power (all areas except perhaps hard disk drive) as my desktop eventually.
It will be fully open and rootable or I will not purchase. It will have as as much power as all past netbooks and most laptops.
The hardware, being open, will always be able to run multiple LInux distros, fully configurable and fully installable. Which means any new device that I switch to after it will run all the applications the last device ran.
Sounds smart to me.
I've seen people mention netvibes as a replacement. However I've discovered protopage.com. I think it is better than netvibes b/c you can click and drag to resize each widget (even across columns). It took me about two hours to move over all my feeds and figure out how to get things like google calendar and gmail to appear correctly. I also added a number of feeds since it was so easy. I'm extremely disapointed that iGoogle is going away. However I've found something better so it has worked out in the end.