How to block google chat in igoogle.com

Recently, I found out that Google did not provide a mechanism for blocking google chat in igoogle.com like it does for gmail chat.

To block gmail chat, you simply configure your firewall/proxy to block requests to/from 209.85.201.189 which corresponds to http://chatenabled.mail.google.com

There is no such mechanism for igoogle.com chat. In fact, igoogle.com redirects to http://www.google.com/ig/ which meant that blocking igoogle.com as a domain would not do the trick. Users could still go directly to www.google.com/ig/ and access chat.

Today, I accidentally ran across a solution.

To successfully block the chat feature of igoogle.com you need to block access to the following URL.

BLOCK: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client

I used special URL filtering software to block any requests sent to "talkgadget.google.com".

You can do the same using windows default HOSTS file by redirecting talkgadget.google.com to 127.0.0.1 or using a proxy that filters out this domain.

The result is access to igoogle.com and all other google features, but with chat disabled!

---

Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!