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Google is painting its own portrait by adding canvas views to its iGoogle platform. The search giant rolled out the new design feature for U.S. users.

iGoogle, formerly Google Personalized Web Page and Google IG, is an AJAX-based service which brings together several Web feeds and Google Gadgets for users, including news, traffic and weather on one page designed and arranged by the users.

While the canvas feature is not available for all gadgets, it is for most, including Google Finance, Gmail and GasBuddy. Others include Soduku, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Getting Personal

“We want to make iGoogle as useful and as personalized as possible for our users,” said Jessica Ewing, group product manager for iGoogle, via e-mail. “Adding the infrastructure for canvas view gadgets allows users the choice of accessing more content directly from their gadget, which is part of this overall goal, and gives developers more space to create compelling gadgets. We’ve heard from both users and developers consistently that they want more gadget “real estate.”

Google is constantly thinking about ways to improve products for users, according to Ewing, who added that Google takes its ideas, prototypes them, and puts them through a vigorous set of usability tests to ensure they are the right move for users.

“The iGoogle features we launched yesterday went through this exact process, and we’ve made changes along the way based on feedback from users and developers,” he said.

One of the biggest changes is with the layout and left navigation.

Clicking any tab opens that tab, while clicking the plus sign next to any tab reveals a full list of the gadgets in that tab, according to Google. Viewing the tabs this way allows users to see all of a tab’s content in one click.

Mixed Reviews

“We’re excited about these changes because…

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