The iGoogle retirement dilemma

An open letter to Google

 

Since its introduction in 2005 I have used iGoogle as my default browser homepage. It has become a friend, a well worn in comfortable pair of shoes. I use it every day and have grown to love its idiosyncrasy but alas Google have decided to decided to retire the service as from the 1st November next year (2013). They give reasons such as mobile platforms bla bla... Android bla bla... Google Chrome bla bla... This is little consolation to the desktop user, some of us still like to use a nice crisp hi-res screen while sitting at a desktop rather than squinting at a tiny compressed space on a smart phone. So Google please reconsider, remember your corporate philosophy "Don't be evil" thanks.

Google Fail

Google Mail Fail - I find it increasingly evident that for “New Improved” we should read “Cocked Up”. Why is it that everything has to change, the constant quest for a so called “new look” and “improved user experience” seems to be change for change sake. Take the new Googlemail interface, Gmail has been my mail service of choice since it was first beta released way back when you had to be invited to join. It has had plenty of new features added but the core of the service has remained the same, great mail handling via search technology with oodles of storage space. So why now do they fsck it up by so called cleaning up the interface and removing essential features like being able to choose between mail and web search right from the search input widget? And what’s this, extra clicks to get around cause the new drop down chooser is cleaner? What the hell was the matter with the old system where at least I could tell what mail had been read from a quick glance, something that is most definitely more difficult in the new look?

Google are you changing this just because Yahoo and Hotmail have released new and un-improved services in their quest to catch up with with your (what was) superior service? For now I'm thankful that at least there is a get-out and I'm able to revert albeit temporarily to the old interface. Google watch out you are about to “do evil” and that wouldn't do for a corporation that has the motto “do no evil” now would it?