Next month, Google will shut down the popular iGoogle home page on November 1, and many Google users are not happy. Just like the Google Reader users before them, they can cry all they want. Google does what Google does.
The iGoogle program has been around since 2005 and allows you to bookmark all your favorite devices, read news headlines, and play games right on your own personalized home page. Many users just loved this program and will hate to see it go away.
As a user of many free Google products, it also scares the hell out of me sometimes. Google has shut down some of its popular programs and it leaves one wondering what will happen next. My main concern: Will Google+ go the way of Google Buzz? Will Google abandon Google+ and Google Hangouts?
As someone who uses and builds their subscriber contact list… losing Google+ would be a huge blow to me. Also, while I like and use Facebook for family connections, Google+ has become my online marketing or business hangout; I just don’t want to lose it. No matter how much I’ve criticized Google Search of late, they do something right, and Google+ is one of them in my opinion.
While many have mainly described it as a ghost town and the user numbers haven’t exactly been devastating, Google+ still plays a significant role in the SERPs and Google markup. After all the programs that Google has shut down, it’s reasonable to think that if Google+ costs too much to run or usage drops significantly, Google may shut it down. Judging solely from past closures, it wouldn’t take much of a leap of faith to believe it’s possible.
For me another big concern is Google Analytics, will Google shut it down? While not totally accurate, the data is a bit off, I can’t imagine my marketing day without real-time analytics running in the background. It gives me a lot of information about how my real visitors behave on my pages and websites. While it likely provides Google with invaluable site and search data, Analytics must be a very expensive program to run, even for Google and its vast resources. I just hope it’s Google’s latest free program that closes its doors.
Another is Webmaster Tools, losing this program would also be a huge loss, especially if you use it to keep your site or sites in line with Google’s myriad rules and guidelines. While it hasn’t been very helpful to me, I still check it to see if anything is out of sync with Google’s rules. Webmaster Tools is such an integral part of the entire Google setup; one cannot imagine it going the way of other lesser programs such as Google Affiliate Network.
Perhaps, besides AdSense and AdWords, the only other Google programs I’d be a little disappointed to see disappear are gMail, Google Earth, and Google Chrome. I occasionally use all of these and would hate to see them go away, especially Chrome, which I have installed on several of my computers. However, for privacy reasons, I’ve been using them less and less, so I could survive their shutdowns without too much withdrawal pain.
Actually, if you’re concerned about your own privacy online, you’re probably better off staying away from Google and any free Google programs. It goes without saying that for advertising purposes, Google collects every data, every keystroke and every topic in which you have shown the slightest interest. While all of this information is supposedly “collectively collected and processed” from Google’s perspective, please use your own discretion if online privacy is top of your priority list. In truth, Google has become the largest list builder and collector of consumer data on the web and in the world. This collected user data has become Google’s most valuable asset, one that can be mined for years to come.
It’s just the price we have to pay for using these programs, after all, you didn’t think these products were really free, did you? Then again, is there anything in life really free?
Google’s products and programs are no exception, although I don’t want to be too cynical, but one has to be realistic about Google’s ultimate goals and objectives here. It’s a publicly traded company, and generating income is its lifeblood – the more you do, the better it is for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with Google giving us all these countless free products and programs, as long as we realize the price we’re paying for those products.
I for one am more than willing to pay that price, and I really hope that iGoogle is the last of Google’s products on the chopping block. At least for the foreseeable future, but I’m not holding my breath.
