Personalized Google Home Page

Filed in archive Marketing on May 2, 2007

I first saw this on my Google Home Page and wondered what it was about. Thanks to BiblioTech Web a brief explanation was found. The web page that I have as my home page, known previously as my "Personalized Google Home Page" just got a new name "igoogle". If you type the simple address into any browser "google.com/ig" you will arrive at your own home page, or an offer for a personalized home page if you do not have one.

According to "AppScout" this name change to "iGoogle" has not been received well by the grassroots bloggers, people from the vast majority that make Google what it is today:

The small "i" in front of Google's revamped iGoogle personalized homepage offering might want to take cover. Message board regulars are up in arms over the similarity to Apple's line of "i" products and are calling on the faithful to format their pages to pre-iGoogle settings.

Other bloggers are asking if Google's personalization is too much. If you share computers in your household and you leave the computer logged in as your profile . . .

Think about it... if you're sharing a computer in the house, Google will collect and make readily available all of the searches you and anyone else has made while logged into your profile. You may have given someone your Gmail password - if so they can now see much more than just your email.

Regardless of what we may think of the new name, the personalized home page has been one of Google's outstanding successes. If you haven't got an iGoogle page for yourself you are missing out on some really good time saving tools. My most used tool is the World Clock that gives me the waking times around the world. I publish my daily blog posts using the world clock as advice of when the prime times for reading my blog arrives.

I also have a widget or gadget or whatever you like to call it of my bookmarks. This alone saves me heaps changing from site to site during a day. I recommend that you take a few minutes out of your busy day to evaluate the potential time savings that an array of these Google gadgets could bring. Just click on the "Add Stuff" link on your iGoogle page to see what is available.