iGoogle
Millions built personalised homepages from clocks, feeds and tiny gadgets; Google decided the app era had made the whole format unnecessary.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A customisable Google start page composed of user-selected information gadgets.
A customisable Google start page composed of user-selected information gadgets. Users arranged weather, mail, news feeds, games and third-party widgets into a dashboard that opened with the browser.
Existence timeline
Users begin assembling Google gadgets on a custom start page.
The service gains a distinct identity and expanding gadget ecosystem.
Some widgets become richer applications inside the homepage.
Google gives desktop users sixteen months to move elsewhere.
Personal dashboards stop loading from the service.
Why it ended
Google argued that modern web and mobile apps had eroded the need for a personalised homepage and retired iGoogle on 1 November 2013.
Last confirmed trace
Screenshots, gadget source code, exports and archived pages preserve individual layouts, but the hosted dashboard is gone.
What it left behind
iGoogle anticipated today's widget dashboards while showing how a widely used personal environment can vanish when a platform changes strategic direction.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.