Rebrand & New Features: Google IG To Relaunch as iGoogle

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!!!

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.

iGoogle eh? Whats next? the iGPhone??

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

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

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.

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

Amit — I like where you’re headed.

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.”

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

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

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

I’d like to recommend Googlr.

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

the iGoogle thing doesn’t even do AJAX!

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…”

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.

Omigod! Stop the presses!

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

What an innovation!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 :).

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.

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

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

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

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

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

google blew it this time

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….

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

When did Apple buy Google?

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.

Gordon - looks like we had the same thing happen.

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.

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.

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

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.

I would have recommended GoogleMe

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

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

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

things that make you go hmmmm

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.

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

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

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

Now where’s my igoogle backup?

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

So when is this magical transformation supposed to take place?

igoogle.com still just forwards to google.com.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Hopefully everyone else’s is back too!

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

http://www.web20friends.net

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!

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.

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..

The new name iGoogle is cool!

The new name iGoogle is so very cool! awesome

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

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