I’ve used igoogle every day since shortly after it came out in 2007. According to this article, google has decided to shut down the service. This really makes no sense, as igoogle fulfills a simple but needed service, specifically letting a user build a “control panel” of content and apps. I don’t see where the new-and-improved google+ fulfills this need, so why is igoogle getting the axe? The article mentions a lot of pushback from google users who wish to continue using the igoogle service, so maybe they’ll see the error and keep it… but it doesn’t look promising.
So, who is going to step up and offer a replacement? igoogle uses an xml-based plugin “api”, so in theory all the existing plugins could be ported to a third party portal-style application. Heck, if I didn’t already have a billion projects in play, I’d probably take this on.