Personalized Google homepage now ‘iGoogle’
Steve Safran May 1st, 2007
Google homepages got a little rebranding overnight. They’re now called “iGoogle”:
Interestingly, according to the AP:
The team behind the product had originally planned to call it “iGoogle” only to be vetoed at the last minute by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, said Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president of search products and user experience. The project’s secret name has always been evident in the “ig” shorthand that appeared within the Web address of the personal pages, although no one knew the meaning of those two letters until now.
It’s important to pay attention to this. This is what our homepages look like now. In the 2.0 world, it’s no longer about “Make us your homepage.” It’s about what you’re going to own the one square inch on my iGoogle page or my Newsvine or RSS reader. I have hundreds of feeds coming into my personalized homepage now. How will your station or newspaper earn that space?
UPDATE: Some of you have commented that your personalized Google homepage was reset or wiped out during the transition to iGoogle. LR readers Ed and Jason report their choices have vanished. One commenter points us to this board at WebmasterWorld.com where several other people are reporting the same problem.
8 Comments Add your own
1. Bryan Murley | May 1st, 2007 at 4:04 am
I may be still behind the curve on this, but I’ve never had a homepage, preferring the clean, blank browser window as my default. i set up a google homepage, along with a myyahoo and netvibes pages, but just never got into the habit of checking them. i wonder how many people don’t have a homepage at all?
2. Steve Safran | May 1st, 2007 at 4:54 am
I don’t think you’re behind the curve. Is this what the majority of web users are doing? No. But what we do at LR is point out the trend - and this is definitely the trend. We try to help show the direction the web is moving. And it doesn’t take much to see that being able to get your news from all of your chosen sources as opposed to jumping around to different sites is clearly a better model.
Stations need to understand the direction web use is moving. This is the direction. This is why fancy-shmancy design matters little, and why content matters most.
3. Ed | May 1st, 2007 at 7:28 am
Did anybody else’s personalized google homepage get reset? I lost all my stuff.
Very annoyed.
4. Jason | May 1st, 2007 at 8:00 am
Mine did too!
5. my name | May 1st, 2007 at 11:26 am
It looks like it happened to a lot of people — click my name.
6. Vinny | May 1st, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Happened to mine too. Luckily I hadn’t customized it that heavily, but it is indeed all gone.
7. Jason | May 1st, 2007 at 10:01 pm
It seems to be back in business now. Weird.
8. Vinny | May 2nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
Mine came back on at some point last night with my customizations.
Oh well
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