A couple years ago, I was really into the start page Netvibes. Before discovering Google Reader, Netvibes allowed me to keep up-to-date with all the websites I visited, as well as providing easy access to gMail, Del.icio.us, and a number of other web apps. But my infatuation with the home page soon fizzle: I discovered Google Reader and realized that Netvibes was not an adequate alternative as an RSS reader. To replace the other features I was losing by abandoning Netvibes, I simply downloaded a few Firefox extension. And honestly, I never really looked back from this decision.
Every so often I check Netvibes to see if they’ve improved their RSS reader, but all I ever find is more eye-candy and little of substance. In fact, eye-candy is about all they’ve got over the iGoogle start page, which in my opinion is a more appealing home page as a heavy Google user. Still, neither one offers exactly what I’d like in a home page.
That may change with the upcoming iGoogle update. Google is implementing a feature called “canvas view,” which essentially gives each iGoogle module the ability to expand its content to fill the browser screen. If this does what I imagine, it means that a Gmail module, when expanded to canvas view, would look similar to the inbox of the Gmail page. The same goes for Google Reader, gCal, and any number of Google services. This doesn’t even take into account the third-party apps. The new iGoogle will also have integrated GTalk, making the home page more social.
Maybe this feature won’t be compelling to everyone, but this could potentially be a Netvibes Killer (at least for people like me).
