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April 30, 2007

Rebrand & New Features: Google IG To Relaunch as iGoogle

Michael Arrington

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Google’s personalized home page, Google IG, has been rebranded as iGoogle and will relaunch tomorrow at igoogle.com. A number of bloggers were brought in to Google HQ today and are reporting the details.

iGoogle is Google’s entrant into the crowded customizable Ajax home page space, where My Yahoo is the clear leader with over 50 million monthly unique visitors. iGoogle currently has just over 7 million monthly unique visitors.

But Google has never promoted iGoogle, and it has a number of superior features to MyYahoo. The most important is that Google’s personalized home page supports widgets (they call them gadgets). Yahoo has stubbornly refused to integrate the My Yahoo property with their Konfabulator widgets platform. Through Google widgets, users can bring Gmail, Gtalk and other services right to their home page. Finally, Google allows users to customize the template of iGoogle - they say that 30% of users choose to do this.

Google is now offering a “personalized home” link on their main home page, which will drive significant numbers of new users to the site. Look out, Yahoo.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Corporate Spam

    April 30th, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    Another corporate spam blogs. TC gives free CORPORATE SPAMMING news for startups.

    TC got sick! What happen to old mike. I miss old mike. New mike got stricter!!

    Sell out!!!

  2. Amit Chowdhry

    April 30th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Not a big fan of the new name. It seems too Apple-ish. Google should stick to naming products that start with G. GPage seems like it would be a good fit.

  3. Gautam Peddada

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    iGoogle eh? Whats next? the iGPhone??

    oh wait…
    http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/.....ady_c.html

  4. Robin

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

    I’ve always wondered why they called the personalized page “ig” in the URL.

  5. Paul Chaney

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    I agree. Google hasn’t used this naming convention ever so far as I can recall. I do understand the name isn’t new, but I wish they had put more thought into what to call it.

  6. Joe

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

    The name iGoogle sucks, but other than that - great service with tons of widgets. Tabbed pages are so much better than Yahoo’s pathetic Select Page dropdown.

    ———–
    We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com

  7. Tan The Man

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    Amit — I like where you’re headed.

  8. Haochi

    April 30th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    It’s always been iGoogle…

    Quote Eric Schmidt from an interview at SES 2006,
    “And so we have a version which is currently known as iGoogle, where you have a login name and a password, and then if you personalize your homepage, you can add what are called gadgets.”

  9. Steve

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    Is it me or is this not new news? I’ve been using ‘iGoogle’ for as long as I can remember.

  10. Smithee

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:33 pm

    A lot of those new gadgets look a lot like Pageflakes.

  11. Vijay Chakravarthy

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:33 pm

    I thought iGoogle was the name for Apple’s search engine…

  12. Rick

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

    I’d like to recommend Googlr.

  13. Fred

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    I don’t see any reason to switch from Netvibes.

    the iGoogle thing doesn’t even do AJAX!

  14. Rick

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

    Googlr could actually work. “I just saved a cool widget to my Googlr page. What’s that? You want to see it? Let me share a public version of my Googlr page with you…”

  15. How to make booming business!!!

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

    Create Widget plug-in and fly to overseas or Europe. They pay you money to compete global super power.

    Find out which country have super power widget.

    Silicon valley is computers
    Silicon alley is new internet media

    Silicon widget can hit any country or state. You can make tons of money. I’m talking about bigger than Saudi Oil.

  16. Jorge

    April 30th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

    Omigod! Stop the presses!

    Google has implemented *widgets* to get the functionality that My Yahoo has built in!

    What an innovation!

  17. jefferino

    April 30th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Neither My Yahoo or the new iGoogle hold a candle to Netvibes. But it does have that google brand power…

  18. Josh

    April 30th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    from now on, i-anything is just gay unless it comes from Apple.

  19. Why Widget Empire is big business?

    April 30th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google to make Widgets for startup users and soon developers will get paid. The key is to increase widget empire like google ads. Microsoft and Yahoo can’t beat Google Ads sense.

    Some startups are looking to create their own widget plugs-in to conquear the world. Be sure to write business model for future widget. Hopefully VC will throw some money for innovating widget plug ins.

    For example, I need widget for anti-virus, privacy controls, anti-spam, anti-trojan, and widget money machine.

  20. Saket Kumar

    April 30th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    Don’t know, whether name changes will make any difference?? Probably not.

    I’m big fan of Google personalized page, so going to use it anyway.

  21. Liam

    April 30th, 2007 at 9:40 pm

    Google is now offering a “personalized home” link on their main home page

    That link has definitely been there for ages… It’s definitely how I found it back in ‘05.

  22. Adam Lasnik

    April 30th, 2007 at 10:18 pm

    I think the main new thing is the “Make Your Own Gadget” feature (perhaps it has an official shorter name; if so, I’m sure I’ll hear about it in the morning :D)

    http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices
    (link’s at the bottom of each user’s iGoogle page for now).

    And, a disclaimer: I work for Google. But while I use iGoogle, I don’t/didn’t have anything to do with the iGoogle service ‘cept for helping out the PM with a quick test yesterday :).

  23. R.J. Pittman

    April 30th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

    The name change will make a difference. Branding is paramount, especially for Google, and Google is well focused on unifying its brand position wisely. iGoogle works because it is about personalization, not about Internet. The i-”stuff” of old was about “Internet” monikers/differentiation which was far more temporal as the Web became a non-event. I think iGoogle finally explains what ‘IG’ stood for after all this time.

  24. Scorpio

    May 1st, 2007 at 12:18 am

    So… they’re basically just copying Microsoft’s Live.com personalized homepage by the sound of it. Widgets + RSS etc etc. Nothing new here.

  25. Gtox

    May 1st, 2007 at 12:42 am

    They’re not even close to making me switch from Netvibes

  26. edward

    May 1st, 2007 at 1:15 am

    Is it just me or is the normal Google branding getting boring compared to competitors

  27. Conor O'Neill

    May 1st, 2007 at 1:54 am

    I made the mistake of moving over to Google Apps for Your Domain yesterday assuming I would get a “portal page” of equal functionality to my old /ig page with embedded Gmail/Docs/Notebook/GCal etc

    Instead I have this hamstrung barely functional thing where my login refuses to work anywhere else on Google and none of the apps have a link bak to the portal page! So much for Single Sign On. And forget importing from an existing account in any slick way.

    A huge missed opportunity whilst the waste time playing with logos and bad branding on /ig

  28. Granov

    May 1st, 2007 at 2:26 am

    igoogle?
    nice, but not as nice as others, such as page flakes et al.

    google blew it this time

  29. Gordon

    May 1st, 2007 at 2:52 am

    I’ve been using this for over a year… gradually adding, amending stuff as my interests changed…. then about 3 days ago they threw away my last years worth of changes and rewound to the layout I had way back….

  30. TwisterMc

    May 1st, 2007 at 4:38 am

    I like the name, and it’s just an extension of the ig branding.

  31. Steve Morsa

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:13 am

    When did Apple buy Google?

  32. joey

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:21 am

    Watch out … this article reminded me of something I wanted to add to my google page - so I went and added it. Then I changed my mind and deleted the gadget. Now every gadget/feed that I HAD on my google page is gone. Amazing, login/logout - still borked - back to square one.

    Sucks because I had two tabs worth of stuff that I check everyday.

  33. joey

    May 1st, 2007 at 5:24 am

    Gordon - looks like we had the same thing happen.

  34. Greg

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:06 am

    I always liked Google/ig better than the other Ajax homepages, because I can use my Gmail login for it, instead of having to remember a separate username/password.

    I’m interested in seeing what new stuff they come up with, but I doubt I’ll use too much of it. All I use ig for right now is the Gmail inbox preview and the to-do list, and I can’t see that changing. Still cool, though.

  35. John Yinzerski

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:10 am

    switched from google personalized page to pageflakes awhile back…just having so much fun with it. i’m not seeing anything here that would lure me back.

  36. Zack

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:36 am

    umm …. what about iVillage? innovators?! Indeed.

  37. pallet jack

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:38 am

    Jorge/ please think before you type:

    - Widgets enable an opem platform for any developer to develop for your platform -

    - while Yahoo! is closed off to the 20 engineers they have working on it.

  38. Jason

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:46 am

    I would have recommended GoogleMe

  39. MikeS

    May 1st, 2007 at 7:40 am

    If they’re going to copy Apple’s “i” naming convention, then they could also do variations of other branded naming conventions, such as YouGoogle, or MyGoogle.

    If they try doing a mixture of Google and Digg….. Giggle :) I kinda like that :)

  40. Ryan

    May 1st, 2007 at 7:44 am

    My ig page got reset to the default. Did anyone else experience this?

  41. joey

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:05 am

    Ryan - yes. This makes 3 of us in this thread now ….

    things that make you go hmmmm

  42. Megan

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:09 am

    This service is not new, it’s been around for a while- I use it and I love it. I don’t really care that there are other services like it. I used to use MyYahoo, but once I switched to iGoogle, I never looked back.

    There are TONS of gadgets to choose from- if you can think of it, it probably already exists. Pretty much anything and everything I check on the net on a daily basis can somehow be checked from iGoogle.

  43. Zoli Erdos

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am

    #27, Conor is right, now that they have a snazzy name, it’s time to fix the Google Apps / Accounts chaos…

  44. Ryan

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:18 am

    Joey - it makes me go grrr. All that setup plus custom info results in nothing.

  45. joey

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:22 am

    I had a couple important phone numbers in their ‘notepad’ gadget on my igoogle …. not anymore. :(

    Now where’s my igoogle backup? ;)

  46. QuestionGuy

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:44 am

    If this was April 1st, I would assume this article and naming convention was an April Fool’s joke. Since it isn’t, I’m just going to have to question Google’s marketing department and my stock investment in the company.

  47. Bodo

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:48 am

    They should have dropped the i to name the product gHomepage. There are enought i in this world. http://www.rcmmodular.com

  48. jpete

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:50 am

    For anyone who hasn’t checked their GHome (I refuse to call it iGoogle), DON’T. It seems that a LOT of us are losing our personalized pages once you log in. I’d wait it out, I just hope I haven’t permanently lost all my settings. It was very useful, but now mine seems to have been erased.

    GTrainwreck would be a good name for the launch.

  49. csquared

    May 1st, 2007 at 8:56 am

    My personalized stuff is gone, gone, gone. Even after attempting to re-add ‘em, they randomly disappear.

    Bad dog, Google, bad dog. No bone for you.

  50. ben

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:02 am

    Google Personal Homepage has been broken since 26th April. Many complaints logged here: http://groups.google.com/group.....3837690de0

    Limited news from Google except misinformation to tech blogs saying it’s fixed - it ain’t!

    Some voices say, hey it’s free - pay nothing expect nothing. Fine except Google’s stock valuation is built entirely on confidence. And I expect a high valuation company to be glitch free - and I expect the market does to!

  51. DavJam

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:04 am

    To generate my gadgets in three clics with my mouse, I use the Webwag.com Widget On Demand , an amazing and so simple feature.

  52. Adam

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:09 am

    So when is this magical transformation supposed to take place?

    igoogle.com still just forwards to google.com.

  53. WhatDa

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:31 am

    Hands down the lamest brand name ever. Not only does iGoogle suck, Apple should sue the poop out of them for brand dilution. Ugh.

  54. Greg

    May 1st, 2007 at 9:52 am

    Well, I still have my iGoogle page working, so that’s one vote in the “not boned” column. I think I might be the only one, though.

    Also, WhatDa, frivolous lawsuits are not, in fact, the Bee’s Knees. Apple shouldn’t, and I’m pretty sure can’t, just sue anyone using a lowercase i as the first letter of their product name.

  55. Igoogle ?

    May 1st, 2007 at 10:07 am

    Bloggers and News orgs got suckered is all I have to say. Blogging, reporting and giving free pr to an already existing feature of google. Whoa they named it after how many years? Congrats google on a job.. hm well… it’s done.

    I get it. igoogle.com isn’t separate from google.com you just have to already have a personalized page for it to work. Never used it because it’s a POS.

    So igoogle.com really does nothing. Congrats guys on the pr for a major corp that has money to sell their own product but used you guys as pawns instead.

  56. Webbie

    May 1st, 2007 at 10:13 am

    iM sorry but it’s shite.
    Defected to Netvibes ages ago and I’ll never go back now.

  57. David Bradley

    May 1st, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Could this be a deliberate ploy to undermine Apple’s “i”. If Apple tries to sue Google could take a huge bite out of them. If Apple doesn’t sue then the value of its “i” will fall, surely.

    db

  58. joey

    May 1st, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    Good news … my page is back! All customizations and data (via the notepad gadget) is now back….

    Hopefully everyone else’s is back too!

  59. Ivo

    May 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    Forget (push) search; discover life as it happens!

    http://www.web20friends.net

  60. moataz

    May 1st, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    I’ve been using the original ajax desktop microsoft’s “start.com” and today, as if on cue, they’ve cutoff support for it the URL now leads to Live.com. The problem is that they didn’t tell anyone this before hand and I’ve lost all my damn feeds before I could export them. Hmph!

  61. Colin Dowling

    May 1st, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    Great article on micropersuasion about personal home pages today. Interesting about how few people actually get in to this.

    I think these pages are super cool but I doubt I’d ever use one. My web consumption and use is less about general monitoring of multiple sites, which is what I see on personalized pages.

  62. david sutton

    May 1st, 2007 at 4:57 pm

    I don’t understand this news, my google personalized home page is the same (except for the i) as always (many months), piled with rss widgets and a few other nifty eyecandy; stock, news, weather, the basics..

  63. Happi Like a Hippo

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    The new name iGoogle is cool!

  64. Happi Like a Hippo

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    The new name iGoogle is so very cool! awesome

  65. John Wantz

    May 1st, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    This is a “blah” move. Google is such a strong and saturated brand. To jump on this iband-wagon is “iweak”… It’s like when a cousin or sibling names a kid after one of yours. No ioriginality :-(

    Other Apple wannabes:
    http://www.ifilm.com/
    http://www.itools.com
    http://www.iwon.com
    http://www.ionline.tv/
    http://www.ibubble.com
    http://www.iloopmobile.com

    the list goes on-and-on

  66. David Mackey

    May 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 am

    Hmmm…Interesting naming decision by Google. Seems like a copycat of Apple.

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