With iGoogle permanently retired, we list 8 perfect alternatives for you

By Darshik Jariwala - November, 2nd 2013

As November 1^st came to pass, yet another prominent Google service called iGoogle was laid to rest, as was promised by Google in July this year. The mobile version of iGoogle was already retired on the day of the announcement.

It’s true that iGoogle did not have as many loyal users or fans compared to Google Reader but it was indeed popular among some section of users who preferred a simple organized page which offered so many widgets ranging from, weather to news feed to tweets to horoscope, with customization options and so much more. However, you can still export your iGoogle feeds to an OPML file, to read more on how to do it, you can follow the steps as mentioned on this page.

A hashtag search for iGoogle on twitter would surprise you with the response by so many users who are not too happy with this news. Here are some of them:

This is going to be annoying. What do I do for a homepage now? Bye #iGoogle… and no Google I don’t want to join G+ pic.twitter.com/jxR8paGFi5

— Samuel Liddell (@SamuelLiddell) October 31, 2013

On a sad unrelated note… I just hit my home button on my browser and remembered that iGoogle was dead. #ripiGoogle #igoogle

— Kerry (@SirKerrald) November 2, 2013

RIP #iGoogle. I was a faithful user to the last day. Now have to use phone exclusively for news, weather and stocks.

— Raghavendra Prabhu (@omrvp) November 1, 2013

iGoogle is now officially down and redirecting to the basic http://t.co/KhRZCzamYA page. So sad 🙁 You will be missed #igoogle!

— Lankywood (@Lankywood) November 1, 2013

Unlike before, nowadays when Google announces to shut down one or more of its services, no one is surprised by the news anymore. People who keep some of the Google services as primary have also begun to keep a secondary option. So if you were one of the loyal and faithful iGoogle users, we have listed below some alternatives you might want to move on to.

MyYahoo

Yahoo’s UI has changed or rather evolved a lot in the recent years, not just the Logo, but the complete Yahoo experience, be it the email or a Yahoo movies service. Yahoo offers a lot of content to add, from social media to weather to shopping to music, jobs, real estate and much more. You can create multiple tabs and customize each tab as you like.

MyMSN

MyMSN does not feature a Metro or Modern UI (or whatever they are calling it these days), if that is what you are expecting. But it does have a very neat and clean looking interface which goes easy on the eyes. No matter how many services you add, the page never appears to be cluttered. The contents are similar to what iGoogle and Yahoo offer.

NetVibes

Many iGoogle and even Google Reader had already migrated to NetVibes after the iGoogle announcement and Google Readers demise. NetVibes is one powerful iGoogle alternative, also with a lot of Widgets to add. Unlike other similar services which are mostly free, NetVibes has a Free and Paid account to choose from, for any normal iGoogle user the Free option provides more than enough content to go with.

Symbaloo

Symbaloo is very different from any of the services in this list, not only in terms of its UI but in other ways too. The Widgets look like an enlarged Apple icon. You can create something called Webmix which is nothing but a collection of widgets you want for a particular page. It might not appeal to everyone, so check out its page and decide for yourselves.

IgHome

IgHome is one service which gets as close to iGoogle as possible, because it was designed keeping that in mind. It will easily appeal to all the loyal iGoogle users with a quick access to Gmail, Calendar, Feedly, Google Drive, YouTube, Images, Maps, etc. All the usual widgets and social media integration required is available and of course it is free to use as well.

If none of the above mentioned services appealed to you, other alternatives include Protopage, uStart and MyWay. If there is any other notable service we missed, feel free to mention them .

Photo Credit – Kim S/Flickr