These gadgets perform a variety of functions, enabling Google users to keep up with their news feeds, play games, get quotes, horoscopes or pictures of "puppies of the day" - thousands of gadgets are available to let people have the toys and information they want.
Now Google has announced a scheme called Google Gadget Ventures, to entice people into making even more gadgets and to reward people who create popular gadgets. If you are the developer of a gadget that receives over a quarter of a million page views a week, you are eligible to apply for a $5000 grant from Google. If you receive one of these Google Grants, and have a plan that aims to build a business out of your gadget, you can apply for a Google Gadget Venture grant of $100,000!
Google employee Sep Kamvar gave an indication of the search engine's reasons for funding these grants, commenting:
"We've seen lots of people develop great applications for gadgets that we wouldn't have thought of or developed ourselves. We wanted to incent developers, and one of the things we had been thinking about was to create an ecosystem so people would invest in their gadgets because it was profitable."
Google will need constantly new and original ideas for gadgets in order to encourage people to keep using the iGoogle page. If people are using Google's personalised homepage, they will generally be using Google search and will be a captive audience for the Google - so long as the gadgets are addictive enough to make people keep using them.
Rewarding the developers of popular gadgets with money to help them set up businesses to make even more popular gadgets is a masterstroke by Google, and should help form the creative community of developers that Google is seeking to build.
These grants are not the only way to monetise the development of gadgets for the iGoogle homepage. There are certain news feeds, such as those for the NewScientist online magazine, that contain targeted adverts - much like a paid search advertisement.
Also there are gadgets that have been built by large retailers, or affiliates on their behalf, which display things like the 'deal of the day' or product news. These gadgets primarily exist to drive extra traffic to the companies' website, but they can also be a powerful online branding tool if done correctly.
Google is using these grants to try and create an industry around making these gadgets. They want people to invest time and money into making commercially successful gadgets. It remains to be seen if anyone can make one of these gadgets work - but they do have the potential to be seen several times a day by any user who picks them on iGoogle, potentially one of the most valuable bits of advertising real estate on the internet.
