GeoCities, Yahoo’s free web-hosting service, is shutting down tomorrow, October 26th 2009. To celebrate commemorate this event, the xkcd homepage has been completely redesigned.
It’s unfortunate that these services that were considered so exciting ten years ago are now fading into the sunset with few people even noticing that they’re gone.
When I navigated to Google’s search page today, instead of their familiar interface, I was greeted by the company’s expanded “add-all-your-widgets-here” webpage called iGoogle.
To tell you the truth, I am not a big fan of iGoogle, My Yahoo! or any such “personalized” sites. First they want me to bookmark them, then they want me to change my homepage, next, they want me to install some toolbar that they claim would work wonders for me. No, thank you.
I can almost imagine Google arguing with me about this.
[2005]
Google: Look, we’ve introduced this brand new thing called Google Personalized Homepage.
Me: Oh cool…lemme check…yeah, it’s ok. [Goes back to watching a movie.]
Google: No, look! It’s awesome!
Me: Um, okay.
[2006]
Google: Seriously! Look, we’ve added a lot of cool stuff. Now you can come here and search Wikipedia instead of going to their website. Isn’t that really awesome!?
Me: (Yawn!) …um…yeah, okay.
[2008]
Me: [Opens www.google.com] WTH?
Google: Isn’t that really cool!? We didn’t want you to miss out on all the fun, so we’ve made things even easier by redirecting our old homepage to the iGoogle homepage. Isn’t that really awesome!?
Me: If I tell you it’s awesome, will you stop bothering me and go away?
