Hmmmm….I wonder where they came up with this idea….

Google (GOOG) announced that “to kick off the summer season,” it has launched a new collection of nature themes for iGoogle, its personalized home page service.

“Google has collaborated with today’s leading nature-related organizations and some of the best nature photographers in the field who have all captured the essence of nature, through photography and artwork,” the company said in a blog post, “Today, we are sharing those stunning visuals of nature, animals and scenic landscapes with tens of millions of iGoogle users.”

Hmmm…a search engine with pretty pictures…hmmmm…where have I seen that before…hmmm…

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Why should location-based social networks be worried about Google (GOOG)? Because its new Latitude product was able to gain over a million users in just a week, Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra told an audience at the Mobile World Congress today.

Latitude is Google’s service that uses your location to place you on a Google Map. If you have friends who are also using the service, you can see how close they are to you on your map and read their status updates. It’s a similar idea to what start-ups like Loopt and Pelago’s Whrrl do.

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I’m imagining a world where each of us, and all groups, networks, enterprises, institutions, agencies and NGOs, have dashboards which are associated with our online presence. Some of these dashboards exist today in the guise of “NetVibes” start-up pages or as iGoogle and MyYahoo pages.

Facebook, MySpace and all social-networking software are another kind of dashboard. And all social media services–from Twitter, Friendfeed, and Flickr to dopplr, Blurb or NetFlix (NFLX)–they’re all dashboards, each with its own nuance, subtlety and approach.

Anytime you see “About” or “Your Account,” that’s your dashboard. So each account you have, everywhere, is another dashboard.

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If you love something, set it free. Then, if you’re lucky, maybe you can figure out a way to make money with it. Despite what appears to be a vocal minority that is unhappy with the changes, that’s what Google (GOOG) may have finally been able to do with the redesign of its popular iGoogle start page.

Announced on the Official Google Blog, the new iGoogle start page features a major UI redesign that allows for both traditional, boxy widgets and a larger “canvas” mode that can take up the entire iGoogle pane. A key aspect of this change is a shift from iGoogle’s previous horizontal tab navigation to a left-hand sidebar.

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Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are often just one click of a bookmark away on users’ Web browsers. Google looks to be one-upping them by turning its personalized home page, iGoogle, into a social network of sorts. With the new developer sandbox for iGoogle, Google is offering hints of what could be a very grand scheme. The video Google has released is front-loaded with what seem to be routine updates for what developers can do with iGoogle. However, toward the end we’re hit with code for accessing friends’ data and yes, creating an all important (in this day and age of social networks), friends’ activity stream.

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