If I had a euro for the number of times I have been asked whether Google, one of the world’s biggest companies (worth over $289 billion) was closing in November, well I would be at least a decent meal with a nice bottle of wine better off!
There does seem to be quite a lot of confusion out there, so this month I’ll confirm exactly what IS going on.
No, Google the company, is not closing! Don’t worry; you will still be able to use the Google search engine, your Gmail account and Google Chrome. What is actually happening is that Google decided, about 12 months ago, to stop offering the iGoogle service. Now most of you will now be saying iWhat? This means that you are probably not even using the service so you will not notice anything change, in fact if you do use the iGoogle service then you will have seen (or should have seen) the message that has been displayed on your screen for about a year telling you that the service will be shutting down on the 1st November this year.
iGoogle is the service which allowed you to customise your web browsers’ home page (i.e. the first page you see when you go onto the Internet). You could add your own content (weather, news, stocks etc.) and it’s this service that Google is closing down. Yes, it is a shame for those of you that use it but it has been a free service and of course not all good things last. Most of the other Google services that you may have linked to your iGoogle page will continue independently (things like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar etc.), however some services (called gadgets) will also retire, for example the “to-do list” gadget. If you are worried about losing anything then you can take a backup by clicking on the cog icon in the top right hand corner and selecting ‘export’ from the “Export iGoogle settings to your computer” section at the bottom of the screen – or contact your local computer guy, of course.
If you want to continue to customise your home page there are a number of alternative online companies that provide this service. igHome is one of these and you can access it from www.ighome.com It looks very similar in layout to the iGoogle screen and even has the standard Google black toolbar at the top with links to things like Gmail etc.
If you already have a Yahoo account then this company offers a very similar service to that of iGoogle, you can find it at http://my.yahoo.com or if you’re a Hotmail or Outlook customer then you could use their service at http://my.msn.com just update your home page and start customising.