robert_cringely
Columnist

All i’s on Google

analysis
May 3, 20072 mins

It's a horror movie cliche: You think you've finally killed the monster, but while you're busy comforting the distressed damsel and wiping the gunk from your fingers, the beast rears up from the dead and attacks. Of course, in this instance, I'm talking about iGoogle. Years after we thought we'd vanquished the last of the cutesy small i/little e Internet names, Google resurrects it for its personalized home page

It’s a horror movie cliche: You think you’ve finally killed the monster, but while you’re busy comforting the distressed damsel and wiping the gunk from your fingers, the beast rears up from the dead and attacks.

Of course, in this instance, I’m talking about iGoogle.

Years after we thought we’d vanquished the last of the cutesy small i/little e Internet names, Google resurrects it for its personalized home page service. (And yes, there’s iVillage and the whole Apple naming convention, but for the most part it was dead. And now it’s not.)

What does the little i stand for?

How about intolerant? Google is urging its shareholders to reject a proposal that calls for the search engine to stop censoring search results in countries like China.

Maybe incompetent. Google’s vaunted geek cred suffered a serious blow recently, when a bug in the very same home page service lost several months’ worth of customized settings for some of the Google faithful. (And after Google ‘fixed’ it, the bug came back and struck more users.)

Or possibly just ‘in your face.’ Last week Google overtook Microsoft to become the most popular — or at least the most visited — Web site in the world.

Listen, I like Google. I use iGoogle (though the name makes me, well, Cringe). But I think 2007 will be remembered as the year the G-men jumped the shark and lost their G-magic. It’s all downhill from here.

Is this the beginning of the end for Google? Post your thoughts below or email them to me here.