I pit Google for fucking with my homepage

The BBQ Pit
#1

I have iGoogle setup as my browser’s default homepage. I have everything arranged nicely in three columns: RSS/weather on the left, ebay/imdb/wiki/youtube searches in the middle, cnn/local news on the right. It works very well for me.

But now Google has decided to move the tab bar from the top of the home page to the left hand side. Um, wtf? I have one tabbed page, called “Home”. I don’t need another one. And now, by moving the location of the tabs, you have effectively taken away from my precious screen real estate. The tab is the 1/3 the width of a column, basically taking away 10% of my viewable browser area on my home page.

Seriously, what the hell? I’m not the only one to whine so far… there is a small (but surely growing) group of users on Google Groups complaining as well. Is this the beginning of the end?

  • Yeah, I know, you get what you pay for, yadda yadda yadda. But seriously, that’s what AdSense is for.
#2

I am with you on this. Very annoying set-up now. Time to find another portal page. Anyone have any suggestions?

#3

It definitely changes the “flow” of the homepage. Not sure if I hate it or not; am reserving judgement at this time.

#4

I hated it when I first saw it, but it only took a few minutes playing with it to start to like it. But it is inefficient. At the very least, they should make it optional.

#5

Vote **about:blank **in '08!

#6

I hated it when I first saw it, but it only took a few minutes playing with it to start to like it. But it is inefficient. At the very least, they should make it optional.

#7

I do use tabs on iGoogle, but I can certainly see your objection.

My complaint is that I can’t figure out how to easily move a gadget from one tab to another. It’s probably something obvious that I’m missing, but it’s annoying me.

Nor does it seem to give you a choice of which tab to put a newly added gadget on.

#8

I don’t like it either. I have Snopes, Reader’s Digest, and Boortz linked, and now there’s a little synopsis under each title in those categories. It makes the page very busy. While it opens gmail for me, I find I can more easily navigate through gmail if I open it in its own window.

#9

I hated it when I first saw it, but it only took a few minutes playing with it to start to like it. But it is inefficient. At the very least, they should make it optional.

#10

+1

What is this “home page,” Kemo Sabe?

#11

I hated it as well. A quick & easy to get rid of it: Change the address of your homepage from www.google.com/ig to www.google.ie/ig.

#12

Irish, eh? Seems to work! Go raibh maith agat!! :slight_smile:

#13

They haven’t monkeyed with .au either. It’s still normal.

#14

Yeah, that. None of the keyboard shortcuts work in Gmail unless you open it’s own window.

Aside from that, I agree it’s not horrible, but it ought to be an option. And you folks at the out-of-USA? Don’t get excited, I bet it’s coming to get you there too very soon.

The Google never rests.

#15

I hate it too. I spent 30mins looking for a place to turn it off. I seriously can’t stand the summaries under the headlines. My page is a block of text from all the news and recipe sites.

#16

If you open up gmail in iGoogle, the hyperlinks don’t work. I have to open up gmail separately.

Grumble grumble…