Google announced that their personalized homepage iGoogle will soon be made available in Hebrew. The new homepage was developed by Google’s research and development center in Tel Aviv. The announcement took place last Sunday.

“We’re proud to offer this international product in Hebrew,” Professor Yossi Matias, who is in charge of Google Israel, said. “This is an important product and we hope that it will provide our users with a Web experience that is distinctly Israeli,” he added.

Hebrew iGoogle will have backgammon as one of the games offered, together with Su-do-ku, both popular games in Israel. It will also include features such as news feeds, weather, local date and time, calendar, You Tube videos and educational tools.

The Tel Aviv research and development center was the second one in Israel. The first one was opened in Haifa in March 2006. Google headquarters –in California- chose Israel because of its technological power. Currently, both centers employ around 40 computer scientists and plan to hire 100 more.