Google's Personalization Push: iGoogle, Localization, Gadget Maker
The announcement last night of iGoogle (the new name for Google Personalized Homepage), Gadget Maker and other localization features, shows that Google is ramping up its personalization efforts once again.
Context & Ripple Effects
The rebrand of Google's Personalized Homepage to iGoogle is the third step in a line the corpus already tracks: Google first pushed the product onto phones in January 2006, then extended it to its new hosting service by August 2006. With last night's announcement — picked up same-day by the BBC and PC World — the start page graduates from a settings panel into a named destination brand.
Gadget Maker is the sharper move: it hands non-developers the tools to build their own widgets, while the bundled localization features signal that the personalization push is aimed at international markets, not just English-language users.
First-order effects
- Google users gain a self-serve tool for building homepage gadgets without coding, and the Personalized Homepage gets a consumer-facing brand, iGoogle, that Google can market as a product rather than a preference.
- Localized versions roll out alongside the rename, changing what international users see on their default Google experience immediately.
Second-order effects
- An open Gadget Maker widens the supply of widgets beyond professional developers, pressuring rival start-page and portal operators to match user-created content rather than curated modules.
- Hosting customers who got the Personalized Homepage through Google's hosting service in 2006 inherit the iGoogle branding and gadget ecosystem without opting in again.
Third-order effects
- If gadget creation keeps opening up, the start page shifts from a portal Google curates to one users assemble themselves — making the homepage a distribution platform whose value depends on third-party and amateur contributions.
- Personalization moving from an optional setting to a named flagship product points toward it becoming the default frame across Google's properties, with search results and content feeds increasingly tailored per user.
The trend: Consumer web portals are giving way to user-assembled, localized start pages, with Google turning personalization from a hidden preference into a branded platform play.