
Do you remember “iGoogle”? I certainly do! Google’s cluttered but useful homepage full of widgets (known as “gadgets”) was a personal dashboard for information that would benefit the user throughout the day which spawned many other tools similar to it like Netvibes.
Sadly, the company shut down iGoogle back in 2013, and after a nine-year-long run, users were sent back to the simple and clean homepage that they were accustomed to since the launch of the search engine.
Today, however, a new handful of Google Discover-style cards are being seen on several people’s Search homepage as shown below, and it could signal a mature return to information dashboards of old like iGoogle was. As with many things Google’s created, it seems it was released before its time and the world wasn’t ready for it until now.

Seen above are the following widgets, or cards. First, we have a weather widget that features the temperature and an icon showing the current condition outside in your zip code. Hovering over it will reveal a three-day forecast. Next, there’s a Trending card that shows a popular search with a count of how many times it’s been called up across the globe.
The third card is “What to Watch”, and shows several thumbnails for recommended movies and TV shows which can be loaded up with a summary and a “Save to Watchlist” bookmark icon in search. These will later show up on your Watchlist on Google TV, or you can simply click through and watch it from the search results!
The fourth widget shows stocks and markets that you’ve saved to your Google Finance portfolio. Hovering over this will reveal a day graph showing whether this particular one is currently trending up or down.
The fifth card shows local, upcoming events near you. Anyone familiar with Google Maps will notice that you can usually find events there when you’re looking for things to do. These cards show the date for the event and the location on hover. Obviously, clicking this will take you to the event on Google Search or Maps.
Lastly, a COVID News card sits on the far right and will show you the latest updates on the global pandemic when you click on it. Hovering doesn’t show much of anything besides a thumbnail, but it’s primarily there for presence, I assume.
Now, there is a “Hide content” button on the bottom-right of the screen, but at this time, there seems to be no way to customize which cards show and which do not. If you visit the new tab page in Chrome, a pen tool appears there to allow you to customize what shows and what does not, but since this new set of cards is appearing directly on the Google Search homepage found at https://google.com, no such controls exist.
So far, we’ve not received any of these cards on any of our accounts, so it seems like the rollout is either an A/B test, or a staged one, but let us know in the comments if you’ve received them already! How do you feel about Google placing content on the home page of Search?
Back when the engine first launched, people sat in front of the screen for up to a whole minute waiting for more stuff to load aside from the search bar itself, but there was nothing to load. Could we now see Google turn its homepage into an information dump like MSN or Yahoo? I certainly hope not!
A few cards could be useful though, and I hope this is the start of some form of implementation of Discover being accessible on Chromebooks. With that said, I think the new tab page is a much better spot for this stuff and not Search.
Join Chrome Unboxed Plus
Introducing Chrome Unboxed Plus – our revamped membership community. Join today at just $2 / month to get access to our private Discord, exclusive giveaways, AMAs, an ad-free website, ad-free podcast experience and more.
Plus Monthly
$2/mo. after 7-day free trial
Pay monthly to support our independent coverage and get access to exclusive benefits.
Plus Annual
$20/yr. after 7-day free trial
Pay yearly to support our independent coverage and get access to exclusive benefits.
Our newsletters are also a great way to get connected. Subscribe here!
Click here to learn more and for membership FAQ