iGoogle Do You uGoogle? 5 Google Products You Probably Could Live Without, But Shouldn't

Admit it. Google is taking over the world. The computing world, anyway. Hey, better Google than Microsoft. Google, at least, provides its products free to the consumer. Often, free software requires paid upgrades to get the "full" version, or there is a time limit on how long you can use it without buying.

Not Google. Here are five totally free Google products that you probably could live without, but shouldn't.

iGoogle is Google's own customizable homepage. You can add a Google gadget for virtually everything: news, tools, games, shopping, affiliate accounts, and, of course, all of your Google stuff: Gmail, Google docs, Google notebook, Google reader, etc. For you internet moguls, you can access your adsense account right on your homepage. And, if there isn't a gadget for it, you can create one.

You can set up iGoogle as your homepage on any brower, and you can add an almost infinite amount of information accessible immediately from your home page. If that's not enough, you can add tabs for more stuff.

I have always treated webmail as the poor, red-headed stepchild of real email services (my apologies to red-headed stepchildren everywhere); necessary accounts only useful for signing up for stuff you know will cause you endless spam grief.

Well, no longer. I love Gmail. In fact, I am now using Gmail as my email client rather than Outlook, which I used to use, and Seamonkey, which I currently use. Gmail has virtually unlimited storage, the ability to archive without deleting, and one of the best spam filters I have encountered. Truth: Since I have used Gmail (approximately 1 year), not one message marked spam has been marked incorrectly, and not one spam message has been allowed into my inbox (WHOA). I'm sure there is a margin of error, but I have remained outside of the margin, somehow.

Google "Docs" does not do this service justice. Google Docs is actually a word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation program. Word, Excel, Power Point...Google Docs, I wonder...

Admittedly, Google Docs is not as robust as its competitors, yet. For most of my legal stuff, I still use WordPerfect, but Google Docs is more than sufficient for the average user. Actually, the fact that it is less rubust is probably beneficial to users who do not need all of the bells and whistles. Although, Google is continuing to add stuff, and Google is much more nimble at it because it is online and not out of a box.

Where Google Docs is better is that it is, or can be, completely interactive and is accessible from anywhere you have internet access. You can allow multiple users and editors, and you can publish your documents in a variety of formats, online, hard copy and otherwise. You can upload most document formats to Google Docs and you can save Google Docs documents in multiple formats. This service really is remarkable for the price.

I realize everyone is particularly loyal to their calendaring program, especially if you use a PDA or smartphone, and I understand. However, if you are willing to be unfaithful to yours, or if you need to coordinate multiple calendars, or if you need to publicize a calendar, Google Calendar is worth checking out.

Imagine, little league schedules, church calendars, organizational info, his and her calendars, all in one place, and NOT all over your refrigerator with multitudinous mismatching magnets. You can share all or part, you can send email invitations or reminders, and you can integrate with Gmail or Google Maps. You can also search for events that interest you. And visually, it puts Outlook to shame.

Google Calendar is great for individuals, families and organizations and companies. Try it, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Picasa is Google's photo editor and organizer. It is slightly different that the products discussed above in that you install Picasa on your computer. You still have the online functionality because you can link with Picasa Web Albums, but this is not automatic.

Again, Picasa is not as robust as other commercial applications, but for simple photo editing and organization, it is quite good. You can share any, all or none of you photos, and if you publish online, you can link to or embed your web album photos in your blog, website, or just about anywhere else.

It should come as no surprise that you can readily use your web albums to embed slideshows into your Blogger blogs, Google pages or other Google products. 

Picasa is also integrated with many popular photo retailers (Wal Mart, Walgreens, CVS, Kodak, Shutterfly, and Snapfish just to name a few), so you can order prints online and have them ready in the time it takes you to get to the store.

These are certainly not all of the free products offered by Google. In this hub, I have not discussed all of the "social" stuff Google offers (Orkut, Google's myspace equivalent; Blogger; etc.), but there is a lot more available. These five, however, are practical, user-friendly, and well-integrated with each other: a one-stop shop, if you will.

As far as I know, Google is the only provider of such a wide range of products across multiple platforms that integrate this well. Microsoft is close, but the components are sold separately and don't have the same level of integration. Nor do you have the level of online storage available with Google.

Think about it, all your photos, documents, spreadsheets, email, presentations, and calendars housed online and taking up ZERO space on your computer, if you choose. I am not so bold as of yet, I still have duplicates on my hard drive, but one day I hope my hard drive will be lean and mean. Actually, at this rate, thanks to Google, one day, my computer may be little more than a portal to all of my stuff.

But, best of all, only one username or email address and one password for everything...ahhh, life is good.