Nedko

Along with the catchy name iGoogle has succeeded to put ‘personalized’ in search. While the idea is nothing new and has been present for long in competitor sites (My Yahoo! and Microsoft Life are a two examples which need no introduction) Google has been able to put a different spin on the concept.

To help clearly define and put the focus of it’s customization effort Google renamed the ‘Personalized Home’ page to iGoogle. Along with that came some new features which were along the lines of the rest of the Web 2.0 world: personalization with the portal feel while being able to aggregate all Google features like web, images, mail, calendar, maps, news and more. The concept of taking full advantage of localization, syndication, collaboration and bringing more web to the user by having gadgets really took off and has proven to be the fastest growing company product for 2006.

One thing that really stands out about the platform is that it has almost no learning curve and it allows the user to define the boundaries within which it will be used. A user is easily able to use the service without even signing up with an account (using cookies) but if you want to take personalization to the next level you can sign up and use it on multiple computers, customize it even more and bring social networking in the picture. Adding the ability to collaborate (discuss stocks or share documents for examle) and get updates about your friends’ photo album or new widgets that they have added is like taking all the applications you use, putting them on the web and running a cross layer of social networking to form something bigger than the sum of its parts.

The widgets concept is great and while it still has some rough edges it definitely provides a great start for organizing a dashboard with customizable layout and content spread on optionally multiple tabs. The rich library of existing widgets will satisfy almost any taste and even for the pickiest users there is an opportunity to create their own widgets by using the Widget Maker feature which provides a nice widget API (more on that in my next post). While talking about customization I can’t help mentioning the themes which offer the extra touch of personality. Unless you are one of these boring people like me you might want to pick one of the many themes which nicely change the default white frame and add the extra touch of personality without taking away from the content. As a new addition Google has even gone a step further including the so called Artist Themes which represent the artwork of world class artist.

In conclusion iGoogle introduces a new way of looking at web + search and re-defines customization with features like location-based personalized search. This direction will be very important for Search 2.0 as it reaches more and more mobile devices. On the other hand a lot is left to be desired in improving the functionality of widgets: creating anything different than the boring RSS or a poorly styled functionally handicapped widget.

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Development, Uncategorized by Nedko