I went from preschool teacher to software engineer over the course of a few years. I'd recommend starting small though - I taught myself basic markup, just enough to get my foot in the door with an entry-level position, then learned more on the job and gradually grew into the backend developer I am today. To be fair, I got my start when the economy was healthy - I'm not sure I could repeat the same process today.

The iGoogle change really *does* blow, but, eh, last time I checked it was still a free service, so I don't really feel like I've got the right to complain too loudly. I just won't use it as my home page anymore.