The Best Alternatives to iGoogle

In 2005, Google introduced a way for each user to customise their home page. This innovative widget was called the Google Personalized Homepage. Later it was renamed as iGoogle.

At one stage, 20% of all visitors to the Google home page got there via their iGoogle page. However, in the past few years the number of users has tailed off and on 1 November 2013 Google announced that they would be phasing the service out.

Fortunately, there are some good replacements available. Here is a brief overview of the main alternatives.

BlueG

The current leaderis definitely BlueG. It is a true iGoogle replacement. The look and feel is very similar and the user interface is more or less the same.

Importantly, this alternative to iGoogle already offers the most popular gadgets and channels right out of the box. The BlueG team plans to expand their gadget and channel offering, so practically every user will soon be able to replicate their iGoogle page in full.

Netvibes

Netvibes is ideal for those who love news. It provides a way to keep all of your news feeds in one place, but does not yet offer many other gadgets and features. On the plus side, there are no adverts, so the interface is clean and sharp. Best of all Netvibes has been around since 2005, so is completely bug free and well supported.Migrating your iGoogle page is easy, and you just have to complete a simple three-step process to do so.

Protopage

Protopage have been around since 2005. It is a well-established firm with a reputation for providing a reliable and innovative service. The best thing is that Protopage gives you far more scope for customisation than iGoogle did.It takes an hour or so to work out how to get the best out of this platform, but once you get the hang of it this personalised desktop is extremely good.