14 DAY TRIAL // One of the big products that are being put to sleep in Google's latest clean-up operation is iGoogle.
You may not be using iGoogle anymore, which why it's getting shut down in the first place, but you've probably heard of it. It was a major product when it came out.
It was also one of Google's most popular, at one point even accounting for 20 percent of all Google homepage traffic. With today's numbers, that would be some 200 million people per month.
However, iGoogle hasn't seen anything near that in years. Lack of usage, due to people bypassing the homepage altogether perhaps and to the switch to mobile devices and so on, means that iGoogle hasn't been a priority for a while.
It has been getting some updates, but few and far between. Still, Google is not pulling the plug just yet, in fact the product will continue to work for more than a year.
iGoogle is getting shut down on November 1st, 2013, so there's plenty of time to find an alternative or just to stop using a product like it altogether.
"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," Google explained.
"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. Users will have 16 months to adjust or export their data," it announced.
There are some alternatives that try to emulate iGoogle to choose from. But a much better alternative is to start using modern tools to do the things they do with iGoogle. There are plenty of Chrome apps and extensions, Firefox add-ons that can do everything that you could do with iGoogle and more.