On Saturday, Mashable's Ben Parr noticed the same new iGoogle gadget I did: What's Popular. He also asked the same question as me: did Google just roll out its own version of Digg?
While the short answer is no, it's easy to see why people would think they did.
Have a site to share? Submit it as a "pop." Like a post? Vote it up and you'll see the pop count increase instantly. Plenty of other sites offer that kind of functionality so why not Google? After all, they've been trying it out in search results for quite some time.
There are fundamental differences, though. Google's service can also figure out certain popular items all on its own, thanks to the massive amount of metrics big G pulls in from all over the internet. Search, Reader, Analytics, GMail, YouTube - they're all providing Google with background data that can be used to compute popular items as well.
While that won't necessarily tell you who liked a particular page or video, it does provide a massive foundation on which Google can build What's Popular. There's also no discussion feature yet, but since we just saw that appear in Google Reader can it really be far behind?
Then there's the whole "Google Short Links service" that was recently added to App Engine. It's produced by Google Labs, and gives anyone the ability to do what PC World has been doing in their magazine for years (think "go.downloadsquad.com/12356"). If they're not already getting data about your blog from Analytics, maybe you'll start using Short Links. Now you, too, can easily brand your own truncated links on Twitter or wherever else you choose in exchange for a little data donation to Google.
Right now Google may not have a complete competitor for Digg, but it's clear that they have the pieces to put one together if they chose to do so. It will be interesting to see if Google decides to push What's Popular beyond its current incarnation.
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