Google Killing Off Mini, Video, and iGoogle 329
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.
What exactly am I suppose to replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Guess we shouldn't be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not every cloud has a silver lining (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:2, Insightful)
Good sample size you've got going on there for your analysis.
Re:What exactly am I suppose to replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
iGoogle is the only browser homepages I've used in the past ~5 years. I guess it's time to switch back to about:blank or roll my own replacement for iGoogle.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
A tool built almost entirely in javascript doesn't work with a JAVASCRIPT BLOCKER?!?!?!?!?11111111
That's just crazy talk.
But seriously, expecting to browse the modern web with noscript enabled just isn't sane.
Re: iGoogle will be missed... maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
iGoogle and my.yahoo are the primary reasons I "use" both services.
I suppose they have something new, but "spring cleaning" my iGoogle may just leave me sticking with my.yahoo
Some of us are happy with the old interfaces - now: GET OFF OUR LAWN!
Re:What exactly am I suppose to replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've done the whole widgets on the desktop thing, it was cool for a while but ultimately I found that I liked it in a web page better. Seems to be less buggy too.
Re:but, my webcomics! (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole reason that iGoogle's RSS widgets were so awesome is that you could pile tons of them on top of each other four columns deep. I could see, in an organized way, like two hundred headlines at once and not have to click on anything except what I cared about. Reader is too manual. I don't want to click on a dozen different things just to get huge bloated summaries of things I might not even want to read. It's inefficient, and I'm just not doing it. Bye Google, you sure know how to break people of a habit.
Guess I'll look into this netvibes thing everybody is talking about.
Re:What exactly am I suppose to replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here.
I always have it open as a working dash. It's easy to use, less buggy than native OS widgets and easier to find the content I need to plug in it.
And with all due respect, Chrome is not my browser of choice for a list of reasons as long as my arm. Firefox is.
iGoogle is, to me, one of the most useful google products out there.
Google is now trying to make itself less useful to the IT professionals and powerusers.
Misguided decision indeed.
Ruined my day (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
MyYahoo (Score:4, Insightful)
How about MyYahoo? iGoogle was a knockoff of 90's "personalized web portals" anyway, so why not go with the original?
iGoogle Replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
Any suggestions for a good generalized news aggregator? Something that will draw from a variety of sources and can be customized for topic preferences.
Re:What exactly am I suppose to replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
... it's also not that hard to write your own. There are plenty of perl/python/whatever rss libraries out there to do all of the hard work, and then you just need to spend some time fiddling with CSS to make it look pretty. Here's what I created about 10 years ago, before all of these other things existed:
http://www.wirelesscouch.net/cgi-bin/headlines/headlines.pl [wirelesscouch.net]
(Well, maybe those other things existed. I certainly didn't know about them though.)
Re: iGoogle will be missed... maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Reader's a fine app for [what seems to be] its intended purpose—but it's nothing like iGoogle, and doesn't do a great job of replacing it in my opinion. I use both regularly, and will be sad when either goes away.
This does seem a pretty weird decision. The reasoning they give (basically "lol, phones and device-/browser-specific apps are the future!") is kind of dubious, and seems strangely at odds with Google's general push for device-/browser-independent apps.
I wonder if this is the result of some internal political/turf/funding war at Google...?
[My guess: The Google+ team is politically very powerful, and they want to push everybody to use that instead. Never mind that Google+ (which I like) is extremely different, and not a particularly good replacement for iGoogle...]
Re: iGoogle will be missed... maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: iGoogle will be missed... maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's a matter of "ignorance" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:3, Insightful)
I ain't a fuckin' grandma. Using Noscript and Adblock Plus. I guarantee my web experience is more pleasant than yours. Web pages don't start playing video or audio, shit doesn't start moving of its own accord. No ads, no script driven bullshit unless I allow it.
Anyone who just lets web sites do whatever the fuck they want in their browser must have a few screws loose.
Re: iGoogle will be missed... maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm really scared that google will kill it too i sometime
They are doing a pretty good job of training millions of people not to get too attached to anything they make, because it will likely disappear someday with no justification (along with your data).
Re: iGoogle will be missed... definitely!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with viewing the occasional ad. They help fund websites I enjoy including slashdot. I have the option to turn off ads here, but I don't. Saying your web experience is better than someone who doesn't subscribe to your philosophy of "all ads are bad and completely ruin the entire web" is silly. The phrase "a good web experience" is subjective. What I find good you might find bad and vice versa. If a website has annoying video and/or audio ads I just won't go to the site. If it weren't for marketing I would have missed out on some interesting things. I do absolutely need those things? No, but that doesn't change the fact I like them.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
I use noscript, but reversed - it's set to enable everything by default, and I disable selectively stuff that annoys me. This way I avoid all the really bad stuff (like autoplaying anything) without being left with a half-broken internet.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine a web with no Javascript. It's like using half of the web. I'm a webdeveloper and website owner and I really, really, really don't care about people who don't have Javascript enabled. I'd rather give the rest a great experience and I don't want to spend time and resources to provide a fallback.
Also advertising supports many of my favorite sites. I probably wouldn't be paying for a subscription, but I think it's common courtesy to give website owners the chance to make a buck for their hard work. I have Adblock installed and I only use it when ads are too annoying that they disturb my browsing experience.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine a web with no Javascript. It's like using half of the web.
Yeah, which is usually the half of the web you actually want. You know, as opposed to all the other bullshit tracking, 'traffic monetizing' scripts that are all over the corporate web now...
To give an example, my former local news site of choice, Madison.com, had a complete redesign a few weeks ago that they talked up. "Oh, it's going to be so much better and more modern, the comments will be much better, etc"...what they neglected to tell everyone was that they were adding a shit-load more tracking services (which, thanks to NoScript, I was able to block) and on top of that, they threw up a fucking paywall, because you know all the tracking cookies and Facebook Connect bullshit they are earning money on, not to mention the ad impressions, and not to mention the shady shit they pulled on their iOS/Android app where they place their in-app ads right next to often used links, like the link to post a comment, thus capturing probably thousands of accidental ad-clicks they shouldn't have, all that wasn't enough, now they have to limit you to 5 articles a month (unless you subscribe to the local paper...yeah, right, who the hell pays money for a fucking newspaper these days?). Well, unless you have NoScript running, then it doesn't work and you can look at all the articles you want, just like everyone could before the all those "improvements".
I will grant that Javascript adds a lot of functionality to the web, but it's abuse has made me treat all JS as suspect until I can ascertain if it's implementation is for functionality or turning me into a product to be sold. I see no moral dilemmas whatsoever with using NoScript to block all of that bullshit and selectively allow what I actually feel are worth the compute cycles to be run on my machine, because it's still my fucking machine. If they don't like it, that's fine, they can do like a lot of sites are doing these days and basically have their site return blank pages if JS is disabled...but in truth, when they get that ridiculous with the shit, I just stop using their site and find another one. It's not like there aren't alternatives out there, after all.
If anyone should be blamed for the fact that Adblock is becoming ubiquitous these days (and NoScript is starting to, as well, something I encourage as much as possible), it's the people that abused internet ads (and later JS) in the first place. If I hadn't have finally gotten sick and goddamned tired of click-jacking "punch the monkey" horseshit I likely never would have added Adblock and NoScript to my browser in the first place.
Re:And nothing of value was lost... (Score:4, Insightful)
a webdeveloper and website owner and I really, really, really don't care about people who don't have Javascript enabled. I'd rather give the rest a great experience and I don't want to spend time and resources to provide a fallback.
Off mark.
Railing against folks because they value the security of their system is angsty and irrational.
You don't need to provide a fallback for non script enabled visitors (though it is appreciated when I site does provide non JS fallback), you simply need to allow them their broken access, they are fully aware that most sites are broken in various ways without scripting and willl turn JS on granularly as needed.
You don't spend resources, they don't get pwned. Everyone happy.