So I guess I'm not the only one angry about Google's decision to shut down iGoogle. But beyond my personal irritation with the impending loss of the site I use to keep tabs on everything from news to weather to sports scores to my calendar, it's just a mind-boggling maneuver.
iGoogle serves to keep users in the greater Google ecosystem. The built in search engine is Google. The calendar widget syncs with Google calendar. The mail widget is Gmail. Google gets the clicks through to any of the news/sports/entertainment sites. (And yes, I realize that it's fairly easy to build a widget for non-Google sites, but your average iGoogle user doesn't have the skills for that.)
That alone should be reason enough to keep it alive.
Now some observers have suggested that Google will try and bake these features into Chrome or GooglePlus or both. And given that it's Google we're talking about, this may well be the case. Which brings up the question: why piss off users by telling them you are shutting down the service (16 months in advance, mind you) when you could position it as an upgrade or combination of the "best of" two products.
They've got 16 months to change their minds.
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