Google releases social apps for iGoogle, wants you to get connected

Google’s customizable personalized homepage called iGoogle has been a great success. It is a user-customizable page that the users can set up using their own preferences. You can choose your own set of widgets and where you want to place them, etc. If you still have not made your own page, simply head over to http://google.com/ig and take your pick. Google even has numerous themes available, some of which change with the time of the day at your location.

With so many widgets for iGoogle, the company is now trying to make the experience much better with Social apps for iGoogle. The idea behind these social apps is to allow users to collaborate and interact with each other through the apps on the iGoogle page. Currenlty, millions of people use their iGoogle pages to check their mail, chat with their friends, keep track of current events, stocks, etc. It is a home page like no other and it is customizable to boot.

Google’s main idea behind iGoogle is of course to create a desktop like space online where you can have all the relevant widgets that you may need. These new Social apps will join hundreds of other such apps that do everything from daily jokes to live stock and score updates.

Currently, the social apps are mainly one-on-one games like chess and scrabble, services like Flixster, Youtube and GoComics and a to-do list app where you can jointly tick things off with friends. You can work with your friends by having the same apps on your page or via a newly introduced feature called ‘Updates’. That last bit is probably going to be like the FaceBook news feed. Hope it is as customizable. But then again, this is Google we are talking about here. You can also edit and create friend groups much like what you are used to in Orkut and Facebook, to keep your friends organized.

Thus one by one, Google is checking off the list of things required to make an all encompassing platform online. If you have not been noticing it yet, just look around you. The pieces are slowly falling in to place. A mobile platform (Android), a full-fledged OS (Chrome OS), a next generation communications platform (Wave), online application suite (Google Apps) with enterprise focus (Apps at work), social networking (Orkut), personalized homepage with apps (iGoogle) and undisputed search engine leader – that about makes sure that Google will be your OS no matter what you are running hardware and platform wise.