iGoogle is not My Google.

This is not strictly open source related, but it is in the interests of most Internet users, so:

I'm surprised that no one has spraypainted an "i" in front of their logo on their building after what they've done to Google Personalized Home.

The consensus seems to be that everyone tolerated Google Personalized Home because it gave us some good toys to play with, but as soon as they changed the name to iGoogle that was one step too far. Our favorite search engine now looked tacky and obviously is being driven by someone from the traditional side of Internet marketing instead of the normal trendy Google-type folks.

Well, I came up with a hack that will remove iGoogle, sort of. At first, I tried to remove the new iGoogle Logo, but to no avail. I tried everything. I even replaced the header section with a search box module. None of it felt right. Even if I switched out the logo, the best I could do was use past holiday logos, no thanks! Maybe this hack will be for you:

The reason I use iGoogle is to look at the modules on occasion. I want to use "Classic" search, however. So I came up with a URL that will take you to iGoogle *once*, and immediately unset the cookie value that keeps you at iGoogle. So, I made a Bookmark in my Bookmark Toolbar Folder called "iGoogle Once" and pointed it to this URL:

http://www.google.com/ig?sa=p&pref=ig&pval=1&q=/webhp

If you want to give it a whirl, just try it here. You can see your iGoogle page, with all the modules, and you can even search, and then if you go back to Google.com it takes you to Google Classic, instead of "remembering" that you selected iGoogle and throwing you back into it.

There is one caveat: You must click "Classic Home" once before this will work, and if you click "iGoogle" on the top of the home page, it will keep you on iGoogle until you click Classic Home again. In other words, you must only use the "iGoogle Once" bookmark to visit iGoogle lest you become iTrapped.

I hope this was useful!