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Netvibes rides into the sunset, alternatives do not impress
Are personalized homepages simply pointless in 2025 terms or just not attractively monetizable?
It’s always news like this that serve as a stark reminder of a simple fact: nothing is forever in the world of tech. Netvibes, one of the most widely-known, widely-praised personalized homepage services on the Web, will be no more after June 2nd of this year. There was no official announcement on its official website or on the website of its owner company, Dassault Systemes: just a simple, one-line e-mail in every current user’s inbox letting them know that “Netvibes.com is retiring its standalone service and you should backup your data before June 2 noon CET” (sic). Just a few short months ago the most famous personalized homepage of this kind, My Yahoo, went away in the same unceremonious manner after more than 25 years of operation.
It was, in both cases, not exactly the ideal way of sunsetting popular Web services but — truth be told — for Netvibes it was in line with what its long-time users were expecting to happen sooner or later. See, the consumer-facing side of Netvibes had not been meaningfully improved or even updated for a very long time — since it was acquired by Dassault in 2012, essentially — which is a clear sign of a product or service not…
