iGoogle breaks Apple stranglehold on "i"
By John Pospisil
In a move that proves that Apple does not exclusively own the prefix “i”, Google has officially renamed its personalized homepage service ”iGoogle”.
With the “i” prefix synonymous with Apple, on first hearing about iGoogle, I thought that perhaps Apple had bought Google, or more likely, that Google had bought Apple. But no, it was nothing as nearly as exciting as that (though if either of those things happen, remember you read it here first).
If you’ve never played with Google’s personalized home page, or iGoogle as it’s now called, it allows you to create your own personal Google homepage by choosing “gadgets” to have instant access to information and other services that are of interest to you.
More than 25,000 gadgets are available. Some examples include Quote of the Day, Date and Time, Gmail, News – Top Stories, Pac Man, Soduku Puzzles, and Horoscopes.
The team behind personalized homepages wanted to call their service iGoogle from the beginning, but they were overruled by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, according to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience.
That explains why the URL for personalized home pages has always been www.google.com/ig.
With Apple’s stranglehold on the “i” prefix finally broken by a major company like Google, will the floodgates now open? Let’s face it the letter i is pretty cool, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be shared around the computer industry so that more companies can benefit.
How long until we see iWindows, iZune, iPS3 or iDual-Core? Actually, iZune has a nice a sound to it! Or how about iWii?
No, that wouldn’t work, that’s just too much i; the product would be so cool that no one would feel comfortable buying it. Such is the power of i…
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Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!
May 1st, 2007
To keep ahead in the cool stakes, I suggest Apple renames the iPhone the iiPhone or maybe iiPhonei, or maybe just call it the iPii?
May 1st, 2007
I’d like to see Apple take Google to court… “At Apple we own the “i”, “i” is our letter and no one else can use it. It will remain our corporate responsibility to protect our trademark “i” and if we must take on Google, so be it.” Just a little artistic thinking on my part.
May 1st, 2007
For that matter, no more first-person singular pronouns.
May 1st, 2007
I’m not so sure Google is the first actually, isn’t BMWs computer system called iDrive?
May 1st, 2007
-HP iPaq
-iGo (the GPS navigation software)
-every int variable in Hungarian notation
and so on..
August 23rd, 2007
iShutUpAlreadyPeople!
Jeebus Harold Christ, they need to just let the “iXYZ” marketing campaign die already. It took them YEARS to finally stop adding “-ster” to the end of things. This is no different. Some company hangs on to a single advertising scheme for waaaay too long, likely due to some ridiculous “campaign success vs. cost of new campaign” mathematical formula..
For the love of cod, just let it go, Apple and everyone else!! It amazes me to see people go all googly over some advertising campaign. Really, people, its just to sell a product! Let’s focus on more important things, like curing cancer & fixing corrupt governments ^_^