Widgets, of course, are nothing new. The clock in the corner of your computer screen is a widget. A decade ago, PointCast rolled out a sort of suite of widgets with stock, headlines and weather information scrolling onto a desktop, but it clogged narrowband connections.

Microsoft (MSFT - commentary - Cramer's Take) copied the idea soon after in something called Active Desktop -- calling them gadgets, not widgets -- but no one seemed to notice much.

It was only when Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take) introduced its Tiger operating system in 2005 that the idea really caught fire. (One could argue that Apple introduced the first widgets as "desk accessories" way back in 1984.)

Since then, companies have gone crazy for widgets. Google (GOOG - commentary - Cramer's Take) began letting visitors add features like a PacMan game and a pair of googly eyes to its minimalist home page. Microsoft added a knock-off of Apple's widgety Dashboard to its Vista operating system.

And Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) bought Konfabulator, a pioneer of the new generation of widgets, in July 2005. Yahoo! now offers 4,000 widgets for download from its site.