iGoogle is the latest casualty of Google's policy of clearing the decks, or rather the desks, of any unwanted, under-used or simply inconvenient (to Google) software.

iGoogle was introduced in 2005 as a custom Google homepage that allowed you to add gadgets and matured to be a personal dashboard, often used a a simplified feed reader and as a homepage.

It  will be retired in November 2013 giving users sixteen months in which to "adjust" and to export any data they keep on their iGoogle page.

If you developed any iGoogle gadgets then you will have to find a new home for them. Your only consolation is that being HTML/JavaScript with very little non-standard code then moving elsewhere shouldn't be too difficult. Perhaps this is the real lesson we all should learn in this age of the disposable API, framework and language.

It may only have been a "Hello World" gadget but its life was short....

iGoogle is one of five products or services that are included in this summer's round of spring cleaning. They extend the list of more than 30 products that have been closed since Larry Page introduced his "more wood behind fewer arrows" campaign almost a year ago.

The others announced in yesterday's post on the Google Official Blog are:

Google Mini which has been part of  Enterprise Search  since it was first introduced in 2005. From July 31 it is being discontinued because its functionality is also provided by Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search. Customers will continue to receive support for the duration of their contracts.

Google Talk Chatback which allowed websites to embed a Google Talk widget to engage with visitors is now considered "outdated". The blog gives a link to the Meebo bar as its replacement but the landing page is a bit disconcerting as it lists lots of Meebo services that will shut on July 11, 2012 and a flash "Google has acquired Meebo!).

Google Video which stopped taking uploads in May 2009. The news is that later this summer remaining hosted content will be moved to to YouTube as private videos that users will be able to access in the YouTube video manager.

Symbian Search App is closing "to focus our efforts on our mobile web search experience". Users are encouraged to make www.google.com their homepage .

I wonder when Google will decide to get rid of Google+?

More Information

Spring cleaning in summer

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Google dumps APIs

Google Labs to close

Google continues its mass clearout

More Casualties of Google's Clearout

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