Google is shutting down five of its products as its ‘spring cleaning’ programme extends into the summer, the biggest casualty of which is personalised homepage iGoogle.
The personalised search homepage service will shut down on 1 November 2013, while Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback, Google Video and the Google Symbian Search app will be retired this summer.
“Technology creates tremendous opportunities to i
“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,” he continued. “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.”
All personal data stored in other Google products such as Gmail will continue to be available, while other gadgets such as the ‘to-do list’ will allow users to export information by choosing the ‘download all’ option under the drop down menu tired to the title. However users wanting to export data from third-party gadgets will have to contact the developer directly.
The writing has been on the wall for Google Video, a hosting service that predated Google’s purchase of Youtube. The service stopped taking uploads back in May 2009, and users now have until 20 August to migrate, delete or download their content, after which Google will transfer all remaining videos to YouTube. Private material will also be transferred, but will remain private and viewable in the YouTube video manager.
Google Talk Chatback, a feature which allowed websites to embed a Google Talk widget into their website is also being closed. Google says it’s outdated and that anyone wishing to embed such functionality should use the Meebo Bar, the only Meebo service to survive after Google acquired the company last month.
Google Mini, a small hardware/software appliance which was offered to index and search an organisation’s internal network is also being retired. Its functionality can be better provided by Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce search, says Google.
Meanwhile, the Symbian Search App is being discontinued, preceding the ailing smartphone OS into oblivion. Users of the app have been advised to bookmark google.com instead, so that they can benefit from changes made to the mobile site.
“Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users,” said Eichner. “Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people’s lives.”
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Close down iGoogle ! The new team at Google have lost touch with their users. The iGoogle personalised home page has been a great service. The increasing number of extensions now available for Google Chrome does provide some substitute for some iGoogle gadgets, but the all on one page or on category tabs of iGoogle provides a better basic service than individual extensions on the Chrome omni bar. The long awaited Google Drive has been this year's good news from Google but otherwise (witness the way last year they ignored the complaints from users of Reader over the poor redesign of the Reader page) Google have moved in a direction that seems only to offend their previously strongest advocates of their services. Google Plus fanaticism is breeding a corporate mentality within Google that is leading to alienation of their users.
So what is my alternative? Where can I go and be comfortable for a long time and live in a world where information and knowledge are the rights of the commons and not the Tower of Babel built by inconsiderate beings driven by values that reveal themselves as lies over time!
If you want to see the huge amount of dismayed and outraged response to Google's announcement on closing iGoogle go to
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/websearch/igoogle-personal-homepage/3SDRsOMBonA
Google are truly getting out of touch with their users.
They say the usage of iGoogle is not high yet they keep it invisible, they do not advertise it and it is not even on the black menu bar of their services across the top of gmail and other pages. It is the long-standing geeks and hither-to Google enthusiasts who know about iGoogle and its great productive gadgets and feeds, so conveniently together in one place.Think again Google please, surely many of you yourselves do use iGoogle and will greatly miss it?
A stylistic feature of media reports everywhere now, you use the present tense in your headline, no doubt to create a sense of dramatic immediacy. But it is misleading and therefore wrong. Obviously it should read, "Google is going to.." .. or, "Google will shut down..," or, "Google is intending to shut..," but not as you have it,as if it were happening in the present moment.
I can't deny it mjt.
It's not just a new thing, journalists have been trained to use the present tense in headlines where possible, for at least the last thirty years.
However the training does also highlight accuracy, and we have to find ways to meet both requirements.
In this case, that might be the clumsy "Google Announces Plan To Close iGoogle", or "Google Passes Sentence on iGoogle" or "Google Says iGoogle Is Doomed" or some such.
Since you asked nicely, I'll fix it - though I can't promise to do it in the SEO title, as that might break the whole Internet.
Peter Judge
Editor