I’ve never understood the difference between a search engine and a browser. Over the years I’ve managed to reach the situation where, when I click the shortcut, a window opens with Google, which allows me to search the web, as well as check the weather, BBC headlines, Wikipedia and feed the hamster in his wheel. I think this might be iGoogle; sometimes it asks me to log in – I’ve no idea why.

So now I’m getting a box saying iGoogle is going to close down. Why? What will happen? Will Google still exist? What’s the difference anyway? What alternatives are there? I’m suffering that fog of anguished despair at my own ignorance that I used to feel in maths exams.

they’re turning off the internets, America can’t afford to watch it anymore

Have you googled it? 😉

someone may have lost it

Oh go on then – I’ll do the sensible answer.

iGoogle is a just a customisable front-end to Google that lets you drop in various widgets/gadgets like Weather, BBC headlines, Wikipedia etc etc

Google are closing that feature because practically no one uses it.

Google, the search engine, which you get when you go to http://www.google.co.uk or http://www.google.com will still exist and continue to work as before.

That help?

It will be missed. Not sure about “practically no one uses it.”, lots of people are complaining about it going. I’m considering ighome as an alternative

Google are closing that feature because practically no one uses it.

That’s rubbish! But yeah, they decided a couple of years ago that other Google widgets/apps/whatever would be better for us than the page we know, use and like. Oh well.
I’ve been using http://www.IGHOME.com, which has been setup to look almost the same. It’s still a bit flakey at times but you can get most of the things you have on iGoogle.

You know, I think it’s because they think people don’t like normal text on their screens. Everyone wants stupid great big pretty coloured BUTTONS and ICONS like the new “New tab” page on Chrome. Pah.
(They would hate our forum!)

Google regularly purge their product portfolio to cull the ones least used and maintain their focus etc.

You know, I think it’s because they think people don’t like normal text on their screens.

I think it’s partly because the majority of users don’t go to google.com any more to do a search (they just use the search box on the browser instead) so they’d never see igoogle

Really not bothered myself. Closing Google Reader was a much bigger pain in the arse for me – till I discovered feedly.

Racheal – does that artificial grass taste good?

Great – now I make no sense at all…

try myyahoo , you can import your igoogle settings
works fairly well

Basically the browser it the program you use to access any internet sites you may wish to look at.

Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox are the three main browsers.

A search engine is a site that allows you to search for other sites on the internet that may be of interest.

So you run the search engine (site) in the browser.

When you open the shortcut that takes you to Google, at the top of the page you will see a bar with the site address in it and will read something like http://www.google.co.uk

Instead of typing BBC in to the Google and then clicking on the link Google gives you, you could type the BBC’s site address straight in to that address bar.

So you could type http://www.bbc.co.uk or http://www.singletrackworld.com (in fact you can pretty much drop the www. these days) in that address bar and hit return and you will be taken straight to that page.

Google != the Internet

Cheers

Danny B

Well I never heard of it and I use gmail, maps, drive, youtube, tried chrome for a while etc. FWIW I go to google.co.uk often for search (most of the time I use imbedded google search in safari)

Clearly I’m not going to miss something I’ve never heard of

And Chrome happens to be made by the company called Google who make a search engine and many other unrelated things besides. They are however most famous for the search engine, and when people say ‘Google’ on its own they mean the search engine.

You can use Google the search engine from any browser, and you can use any search engine from within Google Chrome.