As part of an ongoing effort to focus its business, Google announced earlier this week that it’ll be shutting down several more of its less active products. The products getting the axe this round include Google Mini, Google Video, and perhaps most significantly iGoogle.
For those who aren’t familiar iGoogle, it offered users a personalized home page integrated with Google’s search bar. Users could add “gadgets” for a variety of functionality, including weather forecasts, Wikipedia search, or package tracking. Users could also add virtually any RSS feed as a gadget, putting all of your favorite websites and blogs in one easy-to-navigate location.
As Google wrote in its announcement, much of this functionality has transitioned elsewhere since iGoogle was originally launched in 2005. Rather than looking to a web browser to check the upcoming weather, for example, most people now glance at their smartphone. And for RSS feeds, many have turned to Google’s more robust solution Google Reader, or have simply shifted to using Twitter–which can act like a sort of social RSS feed.
But what if you really liked iGoogle? What are your alternatives? Here are a few worth considering:
Do you have a homepage tool you prefer? Add it in the comments!