Approximately 70% of all internet search goes through Google and they clearly dominate the search market. They became popular for their clean, uncluttered, and advertisement-free home page, but now, as the fifth most valuable company in the world, they offer a unique array of products with complete customization.

iGoogle Header

The Google home page, or iGoogle, is a dashboard of widgets that you can drag and drop to make a page as creative as you are. The widgets, a graphical user interface that allows 3rd party content to be placed on a web page, are created by both individuals and companies. There are basics such as clock, weather, maps, and multiple news sites. A few of my other favorites are:

  • Google Reader – allows me to quickly view the top posts from my RSS reader (read my post on creating an RSS Reader)
  • To Do List – keeping personal items on your work computer is difficult and dangerous, since anything you put on your computer is property of the company – keep your to do list right on your home page so you can access it quickly and easily at work or home
  • Google Calendar – lets me sync multiple calendars to view on one page, including iCal, Outlook, and Yahoo! Calendar – as with the To Do List, you don’t want to keep personal items on your work computer so sync to Google calendar and you can keep your work and home calendars together
  • WikiTravel – links to breaking travel news and destination highlights from their website
  • Flight Stats – widget that allows me to quickly check the flight status of any flight by route, flight number, or airport
  • Fandango – movie show times at my local theater
  • Local Gas Prices – shows the cheapest gas prices by zip code
  • Wikipedia – I never have to go to the site directly, I just search straight from my home page

To get started go to www.google.com/ig. You must add the widgets straight from iGoogle, since there are no links from the individual websites linked above. If you already have a Gmail account then log in using that, otherwise, click the link to “Get Started” and follow the instruction. There are thousands of widgets and you can arrange them in any way to like to make browsing and searching more efficient and fun. And, change your theme to suit your mood. Right now, I’m using Hong Kong to get pumped about my upcoming trip next March!

iGoogle Widgets