Short Post: Best iGoogle Replacement

I’m a devoted iGoogle user since it first came online, and so I staggered through all the stages of grief when Google announced that it was discontinuing the product 18 months ago… with the count down ticking down to November 1… just a few days from now.

For months I’ve held on to the fond hope that Google would relent, would pivot the product in some way.  Then, at the beginning of the summer I came to a grudging acceptance and purged my iGoogle page of extraneous feeds so that I wouldn’t have to transfer too many things.

Finally, today, I gave up and decided to move my home page.  Do a quick search on “iGoogle Replacement” and you’ll find a bunch of inadequate solutions.

• Netvibes is too busy and it’s import tool doesn’t work… it’s also just a free trial that attempts to get you to upgrade, so expect the freebie to go away.
• igHome is ugly and has no import tool, so you’ll have to recreate your iGoogle page.
• PortalPanel is one of those “if you think exactly like the developer then this rocks!” sites, and I don’t.
• Symbaloo is just weird

The winner is [drum roll please…] My Yahoo! complete with a handy iGoogle import tool that actually works.  I had the bones of my home page set up in moments– the only real pain was having to reconstruct a list of bookmarks by hand.

It’s not perfect: the themes are limited and unattractive; the Gmail widget works but limits you to five emails, but it’s Fast, Functional and Free with only one unkillable banner on the upper-right side of each tab.

So don’t bother looking at alternatives– you can switch over to My Yahoo! in a jiffy and then think about the home page of your dreams… and wonder why there isn’t more competition to grab this real estate.

Addendum: In the 20 hours since I posted this I’ve discovered a few minor irritating flaws in the My Yahoo! page:

• I can’t install a Google search box on the page or an Amazon search box
• I can’t make the default setting change so that when I click a link on the My Yahoo! page it opens up a new tab… meaning that chronically have to hit the home button and reload the page rather than just clicking back to the home tab.