Google Gadget Clones Digg’s Core Features

Google has added a new feature to their personalized home page which clones the core features of Digg and StumbleUpon. These core features are embedded into a Google gadget that is accessible from within the web desktop.

This new feature, which Google is now showcasing in its directory, is called “What’s Popular.” Using this Google gadget folks can submit links either anonymously or publicly and vote other submissions up or down.

According to Google, the What’s Popular gadget “uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader.”

There’s more to it than that though. Clicking on the maximize link causes the gadget to expand into a canvas view which sorts the submissions into different categories - e.g. stories, videos and images.