One way to look at all these shutdowns is that Google is on a hiring spree - for every one of these zombie projects they kill they get a bunch of engineers who are already vetted by Google's HR and are familiar with Google's dev processes.
Interesting that they are killing off iGoogle. One might hope there would be a Gplus theme for that home page that would duplicate it.
In the mean time it seems like a really really easy way to get about 10M uniques a month. I wonder if you implement an iGoogle clone on AE/CE and fund it with AdSense ads would they ban you?
I love the synergy of keeping a Google product alive on Google infrastructure but redirecting the money to someone willing to maintain it. Could be an interesting test case.
My first defection from Yahoo was to iGoogle which and is what I continue to use daily to this day.
I've just checked and no product under the Google+ umbrella fills this void.
How they kill this without a suitable replacement available? (the end date is Nov 2013 - so there's still some time).
I personally don't see the point in iGoogle, but it was perfect for a certain demographic. Anecdotally, I know of quite a few middle-aged people who learned to use the internet when portals were king. After Google surpassed Yahoo, they simply switched to iGoogle.
Even with Google Reader, RSS feeds aren't very easy-to-use for non-technical people. It's going to be interesting to see how they adapt now.
Over a year ago we created a really simple iGoogle gadget connected to our site that for some reason picked up steam, I really hate to see this go since I know a lot of our users have it.
I find these types of actions as very important to the culture of the company. It says we keep our house clean, we don't leave old things we tried lying around, and we acknowledge that some things work and some don't.
It may be negligible in terms of workforce impact, but it sends a signal that I think is very refreshing. Good for Larry, and good for the teams who now get to focus their energies elsewhere on something that might work. It beats spending time on something nobody cares about.
Disagree. What is good and often necessary for a start-up is not automatically necessary for a mammoth like Google. If you take all brain power of Google and focus it on Google plus, you get overheating, overengineering and other evils. The mammoth should have expandable parts, forgotten corners, people paid to do obscure work. They can't be a bunch of guerrilla teams and should do with it.
I like having the weather in two different locations, top news stories by category, and my calendar for the next couple of days all conveniently on a single webpage.
We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we’ll be winding it down.
What are these apps? I use Firefox on the desktop and iOS for mobile. Maybe portals are outdated but they still work (especially iGoogle) and the fact that nobody in this thread has pointed out any great alternative is a little disheartening. And leaving tabs open is a horrible UI experience.
At the risk of mentioning "that" company, Bing is not a horrible home page. While I still have iGoogle as my home page on most machines, I have two of them with Win 8 where I've found IE to work better, and the Bing home page is not bad. Combine that with the native gadgets in the Windows desktop, and you're almost there.
Even so, I will miss iGoogle. I presume someone out there has an "iGiggle" domain for a new portal startup waiting in the wings?
They are living in some fantasy land. I know tons of people who use iGoogle and even if overall not that many people are, that doesn't mean it isn't valuable for what it does.
I'd love to see screenshots of how they imagine people now have access at their fingertips to summaries of all this information.
Going to each site individually or keeping things open in 20 tabs is a crap solution.
Amazingly I use iGoogle every single day, many times per day. It collects my news and junk, hosts my frequent bookmarks, etc. Losing it is gonna suck -- hard. I simply don't have a replacement I like as much.
Have they finished moving the video from Google video over to youtube? If not why not? They've had years to do so.
Google Code shut down last new year. I have been missing it a lot. It was a search engine for code repositories and tarballs and had a lot of stuff indexed. It had a nice Thompson regular expression search and an ability to filter by metadata like file name or programming language.
Google Code was very useful at giving me examples of how to do a certain thing. I've used it to search and compare different methods for matrix inversion, sought for examples on using certain API calls or samples of using a certain assembly intrinsic function.
GitHub's code search can do some of this but it's not a very good replacement. Has anyone got suggestions on good search engines for code?
They are discontinuing Google Talk Chatback and the article says to use Meebo, but most of the Meebo services are being discontinued as well. What is a good alternative?
Had totally forgotten about this as well and realized I would love to use it. Aside from Meebo Bar, are there any other services that provide similar functionality? (Namely, allowing you to GChat someone via a widget)
This sucks. I, like several of you here, use iGoogle as my homepage. It's been my homepage since iGoogle came out in 2005. Portals make excellent homepages, so I'm not sure what Google is getting at here. I just tried Netvibes. It's ok, but dangit, it's not Google + widgets. I foresee writing a ton of userscripts to get my experience back.
Shame... There are some old Charlie Rose interviews on Google Video (about Kubrick and Apple) that I wanted to download in a few days (tech crunch doesn't load for me right now so I don't know if Google video is shut down for good, or is in the process of getting shut down and videos are still up).
TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2012
Google Video content moving to YouTube
Later this summer, all remaining hosted video on Google Video will be moved to YouTube. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube as private videos. Google Video users can rest assured that you won’t be losing any of your content as it will be fully available on YouTube, and you can choose to make those videos public on YouTube if you’d like.
If you would prefer to migrate, delete or download your content yourself, you can do so by visiting the Google Video status page prior to August 20, 2012
Google Video is not the same as YouTube -- it's video search that includes videos from external websites. Is YouTube going to start indexing external videos, or is there just going to be a video void for finding this stuff?
iGoogle is my home page. It shows lots of RSS feeds. Its the first place I see HN for example. Clearly with that page as my home page I naturally use google search.
I guess my use of google will up for grabs, I will have to now set my home page to something else. If that has an integrated search engine, and its not google, then bye bye google.
I am utterly amazed by this. Google are going to literally tell me not use them any more. Quite possibly a good thing from my POV. Being so tied in and then being given a forced out like this is potential gold.
Pro tip: If your favorite app hasn't changed anything in years, it's not because it's perfect. It's because no one is working on it other than keeping the lights on.
[+] [-] MattLaroche|13 years ago|reply
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-cleaning-in-su...
[+] [-] Dylan16807|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phene|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eagsalazar|13 years ago|reply
Just leave it up for christs sake. I wonder if this isn't about forcing people to other services.
Take the developers and let it keep going. No new commits, it works!
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
In the mean time it seems like a really really easy way to get about 10M uniques a month. I wonder if you implement an iGoogle clone on AE/CE and fund it with AdSense ads would they ban you?
I love the synergy of keeping a Google product alive on Google infrastructure but redirecting the money to someone willing to maintain it. Could be an interesting test case.
[+] [-] beambot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mythz|13 years ago|reply
How they kill this without a suitable replacement available? (the end date is Nov 2013 - so there's still some time).
[+] [-] m3koval|13 years ago|reply
Even with Google Reader, RSS feeds aren't very easy-to-use for non-technical people. It's going to be interesting to see how they adapt now.
[+] [-] mmx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jroseattle|13 years ago|reply
It may be negligible in terms of workforce impact, but it sends a signal that I think is very refreshing. Good for Larry, and good for the teams who now get to focus their energies elsewhere on something that might work. It beats spending time on something nobody cares about.
[+] [-] gbog|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koyote|13 years ago|reply
I like having the weather in two different locations, top news stories by category, and my calendar for the next couple of days all conveniently on a single webpage.
Is there any viable alternative?
[+] [-] shmageggy|13 years ago|reply
We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we’ll be winding it down.
What are these apps? I use Firefox on the desktop and iOS for mobile. Maybe portals are outdated but they still work (especially iGoogle) and the fact that nobody in this thread has pointed out any great alternative is a little disheartening. And leaving tabs open is a horrible UI experience.
[+] [-] EwanG|13 years ago|reply
Even so, I will miss iGoogle. I presume someone out there has an "iGiggle" domain for a new portal startup waiting in the wings?
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liquidsnake|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmelbye|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eagsalazar|13 years ago|reply
I'd love to see screenshots of how they imagine people now have access at their fingertips to summaries of all this information.
Going to each site individually or keeping things open in 20 tabs is a crap solution.
[+] [-] bane|13 years ago|reply
Have they finished moving the video from Google video over to youtube? If not why not? They've had years to do so.
[+] [-] exDM69|13 years ago|reply
Google Code was very useful at giving me examples of how to do a certain thing. I've used it to search and compare different methods for matrix inversion, sought for examples on using certain API calls or samples of using a certain assembly intrinsic function.
GitHub's code search can do some of this but it's not a very good replacement. Has anyone got suggestions on good search engines for code?
[+] [-] emmelaich|13 years ago|reply
http://code.google.com/codesearch
For other hints, search for older articles on this topic on HN.
[+] [-] dazbradbury|13 years ago|reply
I'm simply surprised that Olark is so widespread, and yet I'd never come across this Google product which is older and extremely similar.
[1] -http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-talk-chatback....
[+] [-] twodayslate|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConstantineXVI|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricefield|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billeh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jscheel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pooriaazimi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AjithAntony|13 years ago|reply
TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2012 Google Video content moving to YouTube Later this summer, all remaining hosted video on Google Video will be moved to YouTube. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube as private videos. Google Video users can rest assured that you won’t be losing any of your content as it will be fully available on YouTube, and you can choose to make those videos public on YouTube if you’d like.
If you would prefer to migrate, delete or download your content yourself, you can do so by visiting the Google Video status page prior to August 20, 2012
[+] [-] espeed|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_cx|13 years ago|reply
I guess my use of google will up for grabs, I will have to now set my home page to something else. If that has an integrated search engine, and its not google, then bye bye google.
I am utterly amazed by this. Google are going to literally tell me not use them any more. Quite possibly a good thing from my POV. Being so tied in and then being given a forced out like this is potential gold.
[+] [-] ecspike|13 years ago|reply
Pro tip: If your favorite app hasn't changed anything in years, it's not because it's perfect. It's because no one is working on it other than keeping the lights on.
[+] [-] ______|13 years ago|reply
In many parts of the world, portals are still hugely important... Yahoo is #1 in Japan, for example.
[+] [-] cbr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bztzt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Produce|13 years ago|reply
I'm dreaming of a day when everyone owns a server.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] djrconcepts|13 years ago|reply
I'm upset that google is discontinuing igoogle.
[+] [-] nixle|13 years ago|reply