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Google Businesses Internet Explorer The Internet IT

New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name 340

Posted by samzenpus from the one-stop-searching dept.
Philipp Lenssen writes "The newest release of the Google Toolbar (Internet Explorer only) comes with a Browse by Name feature. It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page. Is this the return of Internet Keywords?"
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New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name More

New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name

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  • Appears to work well (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:21PM (#10196733)
    I typed in "buggy insecure browser" and it took me here [microsoft.com].

  • lucky (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dirvish ( 574948 ) <(dirvish) (at) (foundnews.com)> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:22PM (#10196738) Homepage Journal
    So...it goes to the I'm Feeling Lucky link?

    • Re:lucky (Score:5, Informative)

      by trauma ( 62841 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:41PM (#10196886)
      I downloaded this thing about a week ago after a format, and without having performed any rigorous testing my impression is that it takes me directly to a page *only* if the URL comprises my search terms. So it's much more selective than "i'm feeling lucky".

      To take a (random) example, typing "harman kardon" takes me to harmankardon.com. However, typing "harman kardon amplifiers" takes me to a standard search results page. Same thing with "mazda" vs "mazda trucks".

      So IMHO it ends up being a rather benign little time-saver.

      • Re:lucky (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dr Tall ( 685787 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:54PM (#10196978) Journal
        If that's the case, this will only serve to inflame the domain war disputes. Does Visa have more of a point about registering Visa.com if Google won't even display the credit card company on a search for "Visa"?

        • Re:lucky (Score:5, Interesting)

          by trauma ( 62841 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:04PM (#10197051)
          Oddly enough, typing "visa" went to a standard search results page when I tried it just now. Of course visa.com was the first link displayed (aside from the links promoting google's news service), but still that's interesting. I wonder what the actual mechanism is.
      • So it's like Opera, then, were the name I type into the addressbar is run through www.x.com, .net, .org, .edu, .ca, .bc.ca, and whatever else I care to configure in...

        (it'll also cycle variations in lieu of www, 'cept that afaik, there aren't any really common ones. I guess perhaps I could add sourceforge to the list.0

      • Commerce (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I am curious about the impact on commerce sites who currently use search engine rankings as part of their overall marketing mix.

        Why would a search for "Harman Kardon" take me to HarmanKardon.com instead of showing me the Top 10 results which might include discount resellers of Harmon Kardon products? Instead, I, the websurfer, now must wade through informational content and somehow find my way to resellers officially listed at the HK site.

        Why would a search for "Grand Canyon" *not* take me to GrandCanyon

    • Re:lucky (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LnxAddct ( 679316 ) <sgk25@drexel.edu> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:24PM (#10197205)
      Firefox has had this for a while. Anyone running firefox (I'm running 0.9.3) type "New York Times" in the url bar and hit enter, it puts you at www.nytimes.com. It just takes you to the I'm Feeling lucky link, but it comes in handy.
      Regards,
      Steve

  • address bar (Score:3, Funny)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:22PM (#10196740) Homepage Journal
    Thanks, but I much prefer to use my address bar for my google searches.
    • that should read
      Thanks, but I much prefer to use my Firebird address bar for my google searches.

      • Re:correction (Score:2, Informative)

        by baximus ( 552800 )
        Really? I use Firefox myself.

        But I know what you mean - the first time I typed text into the address bar ("2008 Olympics" I think it was) and it automatically took me to the best match (in this case here [beijing-2008.org]), I was in awe. Now I use it all the time.
      • that should read Thanks but I prefer to use my Opera address bar for my [google/lycos/amazon/ebay/download.com/etc] searches.

  • Coming soon: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:22PM (#10196749)
    Keywords for sale.
    • Be there, done that.

      Anyone remember RealNames? Me neither.
    • or perhaps you haven't seen MSN search?

    • Re:Coming soon: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:34PM (#10196844) Journal
      Why is anyone who likens this to AOL, or mentions that Google (now a publically traded corporation) might use this as a source of profit getting modded down as troll or flamebait?

      Hell, you should be modded redundant. Of COURSE google will sell keywords.

      When it comes time to show numbers to investors, all their lovey-dovey altruistic bullshit will be forgotten.

      • Re:Coming soon: (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:43PM (#10197313) Homepage
        Why is anyone who likens this to AOL, or mentions that Google (now a publically traded corporation) might use this as a source of profit getting modded down as troll or flamebait?

        The same reason cynical, knee-jerk, anti-corporate pessimism regularly gets modded Insightful?

      • Re:Coming soon: (Score:5, Insightful)

        by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Thursday September 09, 2004 @03:24AM (#10198486) Homepage Journal
        When it comes time to show numbers to investors, all their lovey-dovey altruistic bullshit will be forgotten.

        That "bullshit" is the entire reason Google is the 500-pound gorilla of search. They are the only search company anybody cares about precisely because they don't let money interfere with their search; ironically, this allows them to make more money. The investors won't try to screw the customer at all costs, they will want whatever makes more money, and Google has proven that not screwing the customer can win.

  • You mean... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:23PM (#10196753) Homepage
    Like firefox's address bar already does? Type in a word or phrase and hit enter and you're directed to the equivalent of an "I'm feeling lucky" search on whatever you typed.

    • Re:You mean... (Score:3, Funny)

      by jdkane ( 588293 )
      Well, it's nice to see IE is finally catching up ... the slow but happy kid of the bunch.

      • Re:You mean... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Atrax ( 249401 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:27PM (#10196783) Homepage Journal
        > Well, it's nice to see IE is finally catching up

        yeah, but it's not IE catching up. it's a third-party addon, not the IE team suddenly adding a (very useful hassle saving) feature.

    • Is there a Canadian version? I thought the days of US-only were gone.

    • Re:You mean... (Score:5, Informative)

      by terranlune ( 530630 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:03PM (#10197045) Homepage
      You could actually do this in IE as well by merging the values below into the registry:

      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl]
      "provider"=""

      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g]
      @="http://www.google.com/se arch?q=%s&btnG=Google+S earch"
      " "="+"
      "#"="%23"
      "&"="%26"
      "?"="%3F"
      "+"="%2B"
      "="="%3D"

      I've been using this built-in support in both browsers for years...
    • This is why I read /. I learn something new everyday. Thanks.
    • My thoughts exactly. I've had this ability for month's now. It's good to just type history of marie antoinette and come up to a relevant page. In fact, it's dangerous because it's not Google-branded and you could just not know it's actually Google doing the search.
    • Actually, if you read over other comments, it appears that it is not just a quick way to get to the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' link, it only takes you to that page if it matches really well or something, as it sometimes goes to the actual Google search.

  • Funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Drakonite ( 523948 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:24PM (#10196759) Homepage
    My browser (firefox) does this already. Sometimes I end up at really weird pages, but as long as I type in something sane that has a definite homepage, it takes me there.

    I haven't looked under the hood but I suspect it's a glorified I'm Feeling Lucky google search. Doesn't seem very news worthy to me...

  • Anytime I use decent search terms Google generally finds exactly what I am looking for within the first three links.

    Honestly I don't know how well "I'm Feeling Lucky" will work for most users. Hell, most people I know have to wade through their search results b/c they never know the right way to word their search terms.
    • feeling lucky never works for me.

      its usually the third link or so that has what i want.

      in fact, if one could reroute -im feeling lucky- to the third link, i'd probably be better off.

      i would capitalize properly, but my left shift key is broken, and im too lazy to use the right shift.

  • Poor submission (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:24PM (#10196769)
    http://toolbar.google.com/bbn_help.html [google.com] for (a little) more info

  • google takes over world (Score:3, Insightful)

    by qopax ( 782239 ) <s.roman @ g mail.com> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:25PM (#10196775) Homepage

    So they can get to everybody. An invite isn't something you sign up for, it is something given to you, current users would give it to their close friends and relatives, who are prolly not technical users and know nothing about current tech news and development of something as bland as a new email service, but thus letting people know of how good it is, and making sure the word spreads out that much farther. wow, no wonder google mostly or only employs phd's...

    smart aren't they? also, google is still free, and I saw many people say they would be completely willing to pay for it on slashdot just because it is pretty much better than any other search engine that is currently available, and it is so damn fast. But Google doesn't need to slow down their conquest of the internet market, by doing something like making their services fee-based, at least not yet. First something as unimportant as a search engine. then an email service. next an efficient and elegant messenger with most features you need and enough userbase from gmail and google to make it the most popular messenger in the world. then a web browser with all these features integrated into a slick and resource efficient application, along with it a security package guarding your internet experience.

    then an operating system.

    then manufacturing it's own line of computers. most common type at first, but after maybe making it's own type of a portable computer system.

    sounds like Apple, in the way that it is so popular right now with the iPods, but only iPods, and the way their products are so elegant and clean and efficient. ut much less expensive than Apple, currently at least.

    Along the way probably Google will make a bad decision or in one of the processes I described something better than a Google's product would be released and would gain popularity and the plan would fall through. but Google probably isn't stupid enough to create a plan that isn't fault-tolerant. the course of this plan may take 15, maybe 20 years, and then Google will control humanity and make a cluster of human brains integrated with computers to find out the meaning of life?

    oh wait, that would be evil

  • Firefox & Safari (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Feneric ( 765069 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:25PM (#10196777) Homepage

    My first thought was "why MSIE only?" but then upon looking closer discovered that it only seems to be more or less replicating the facility already built into Firefox and Safari.

    Not too earth shattering, and just in time to catch a declining IE. Most of the folks who would download and install this are probably competent enough to download and install Firefox.

    • Re:Firefox & Safari (Score:4, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:37PM (#10196862)
      Not too earth shattering, and just in time to catch a declining IE.

      Sorry but I don't exactly think it's all that important of a feature. It surely isn't anyting but bloat. Don't we normally complain about that with other pieces of software?

      Somehow when we talk about Mozilla/Firefox features that IE doesn't have it's never unnecessary.
      • this feature isn't built into firefox, the ability to make it is. firefox lets you define keywords.. by default it defines "goto" as http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&btnI=I'm+Feeling +Lucky
        %s is replaced with whatever you type after "goto"

        I've defined "go" to just do the search w/o i'm feeling lucky (I use that more since apparently I'm not lucky)
    • I do not think for a minute that replicating existing Firefox functionality was Google's main reason for not creating a Firefox version of this toolbar. The simple fact is, Google knows very well that IE, even with its recent troubles, STILL accounts for over 90 percent of all web browsing, and is therefore their primary target audience.

      Supposing it had been the other way around... Let's suppose that Firefox had been the one with 90 percent market share that was declining, while IE was rising... Do you

    • Camino (Score:3, Interesting)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 )
      I've been doing this for a long time in Camino using the search field that is included with the browser. Doesn't include "I feel lucky," but so what? I'd rather have to click the mouse one more time than get sent to the wrong page because I wasn't so lucky.

      Best thing about this is if you edit SearchURLList.plist, you can include any search engine you like in the search engine list. I think any Mozilla browser will work this way, and there are third party tools for Safari that allow the same thing. I cli

  • Q: What happens when you mix "Don't be evil" with "embrace and extend" and reliable searching with Internet Explorer?

  • Now THATs irony. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lifebouy ( 115193 )
    Google, of all people should not be building an IE-only ANYTHING. They should know better.
    I think it's a bit ironic, too, that right when Firefox is taking the net by storm, Google puts out something which could give people an excuse not to quit thier IE addiction. "Oh I tried that firefox thing, but it couldn't load my google toolbar, so I went back to Internet Exploder"
    • Google put out the toolbar in 2001, long before Firefox became popular. Why shouldn't they release it for IE? Mozilla and Firefox already have Google builtin. They want more people to use Google, this just makes it easier.
  • I would guess that this is aimed more at your average mom and pop internet users, not /. readers. As such, if they can avoid the whole keyword problem, it will be useful for their target audience. After all, how many readers use IE anyway?

  • This will be very interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JeanBaptiste ( 537955 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:30PM (#10196810)
    "It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page."

    Google hacking will be really damn funny. Just imagine, say, for 6 months, people get used to typing 'update windows' in their address bar. Then, some google hacker figures out a way to suddenly spike the value of some other site somehow to include 'update windows' as the first choice. Hopefully not to goatse.

    other fun things to do with google [ihackstuff.com]

  • Can be very glitchy on Intranets (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RomSteady ( 533144 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:32PM (#10196821) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately, if you enter a single word, it does not check to see if it can resolve the name on your Intranet first. Instead, it immediately does the "Browse By Name."

    This caused a lot of issues on our Intranet. Just warning everyone.
  • For those too young to remember, this would be BARN: Bourne Again RealNames

    Something to reminisce:
    RealNames Wayback [archive.org].

    You can see their fall here:
    Realnames.com [alexa.com].

  • "Internet keywords" without the evil (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IntelliTubbie ( 29947 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:37PM (#10196858)
    Is this the return of Internet Keywords?

    In one sense, Google has always been about "Internet keywords" -- accessing information by description rather than name. This simply streamlines the process of going to www.google.com, typing in the search terms, and hitting "I feel lucky" into a single step within the browser.

    So why did "Internet keywords" get such a bad rap the first time around? Because, contrary to Google's motto ("Don't be evil"), they were doing it to profit from selling keywords. While they claimed to be delivering information to users, they were really delivering users to advertisers.

    Thankfully, Google discovered that there's a sizeable market for honest technology that does what it says. To cite another example, this is also why user-controlled RSS has succeeded where deliverer-controlled "Push" technology failed so spectacularly.

    Cheers,
    IT

  • heh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SinaSa ( 709393 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:37PM (#10196863) Homepage
    Everyone is saying "Not too earth shattering" or "My browser already does this!".

    Who doesn't think google can do it better? Of course this will be a glorified "I'm feeling lucky" but google can probably make big bucks selling keywords, to the likes of movies promoters for new release movies (like AOL).

    This isn't the biggest chunk of news ever, obviously, but haven't we all seen something LESS newsworthy on /.?
  • And so the Googles fall from grace begins. First directing you to I'm Feeling Lucky sites, and then to Ad Word sites.

  • Patent trouble (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IgD ( 232964 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:48PM (#10196948)
    Looks like some else already patented this concept: http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06101537__ [delphion.com]

    "A universal electronic resource denotation, request and delivery system allows a user to locate information on a distributed computer system or network such as the Internet by knowing or guessing a short mnemonic alias of an electronic resource without the user having to know the physical or other location denotation such as the universal resource locator (URL) of the desired resource."

  • Oy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by .com b4 .storm ( 581701 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:54PM (#10196981)
    A lot of high-mod posts on here are totally missing the point. The point isn't so much that IE is finally getting the equivelant of an "I'm feeling lucky" text box, it's getting one that is (supposedly) intelligent. When Google thinks the "I'm feeling lucky" link is what you want, it will take you there. If not, it takes you to the regular search results. That is what makes this (albeit questionably) interesting.

  • Not new (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @09:56PM (#10197001) Homepage Journal
    Errr, this isn't new per say, except for maybe IE. It's been in the Mozilla Google toolbar for a few months now. I personally find it highly annoying.
  • Just think of all the time we'll save by typing "slashdot" instead of "slashdot.org"!

  • I'm really feeling lucky... (Score:4, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:17PM (#10197138)
    In a sense, what Google's doing here is taking what used to happen when you typed a non-domain'ed phrase into IE's address bar, a search at your selected search engine, and declaring that if the confidence score is high enough, equating that to an "I'm feeling lucky" click on the Google homepage.

    In a sense, if the PageRank of hit #1 is so far away from the PageRank of hit #2... why bother with the selection screen, just assume that the user wants to see #1 and give it to them.
  • I was once under the impression that a "Google bomb" was finding a short phrase that jumps directly to only one page on the entire internet, but upon consulting the wiki [wikipedia.org], I don't think so.

    But anyway, is that sort of what this is like? Typing in keywords that result in a query with a single result ranked so highly above the rest that Google decided it just knows what you were looking for?

    And what if I have search from the address bar turned off?
  • When are Google going to release the Mozilla version of this?

    --
    Try Nuggets [mynuggets.net], the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.

  • ... that when my mom starts typing sentences in the address bar, it will actually work!?!?

    Address: I want to buy roses

    Result: Welcome to buyroses.com!

    *sigh* I'll miss the days of yelling at family members that a domain must end with dot something and an email address has an @ symbol.

  • RealNames information (Score:5, Informative)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:55PM (#10197388) Homepage
    For those of you that don't remember the abomination that was RealNames, here's a story about their last business day [searchenginewatch.com]

    Back when Real Names was a business, I was working for a Movie Studio. The Real Names folks almost sounded threatening when they told us that we'd better snatch up our names before someone else did! Thankfully we just ignored them.

  • Old news, Mozilla/Netscape7 have bookmark keywords (Score:5, Informative)

    by fcassia_at_gmail ( 785469 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @11:39PM (#10197626)
    Old news. Mozilla and Netscape 7.x both feature "Bookmark Keywords"... one of the hidden gems of Mozilla Browser Suite.

    1. Go to your favorite web page (say www.nytimes.com).
    2. Bookmark it (CTRL-D)
    3. Go to the Bookmarks Manager (CTRL-B)
    4. Scroll down to the entry you just added and press CTRL-I to edit it.
    5. On the dialog that appears, there's a "Keyword" entry field, enter the "keyword" that you want to use for this web page you have bookmarked (example: nyt).
    6. That's it!. Next time you enter "NYT" (unquoted of course) on the url entry field and press [enter] you're taken to www.nytimes.com
    7. repeat for every web page that you want to create your personal keyword.

    Some other suggestions:
    1. Drop Internet Explorer and MS-Lookout! ^R^R^R^R^R^R Outlook.

    2. Install Mozilla as your primary browser and e-mail client.

    3. set your IE proxy to some non-existant internal IP address (10.x.x.x), on the exceptions list, put the windowsupdate page (makes it impossible for IE to reach out any page on the net, except windowsupdate).

    FC

  • mark my words (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @11:58PM (#10197746) Homepage Journal
    How about adding a "trademark-domain" namespace scheme to Google, like "tm:music-distribution:apple", that finds only pages about Apple records, and not Apple Computers, using the existing trademark system?

  • Pop up blocker (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gcaseye6677 ( 694805 ) on Thursday September 09, 2004 @12:15AM (#10197844)
    I hope they've fixed their popup blocker with this new version. It seems like some asshole marketroid has found a way around it to pop ads on the screen with the toolbar running. Yea, that's going to be a really successful ad campaign. Serve popups to people who have taken specific effort to block them. When will these idiots get a clue?

  • Local Names (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Thursday September 09, 2004 @12:38AM (#10197957) Homepage
    I figure this is the right place to plug a project I've been working on.

    It's called "Local Names," [taoriver.net] and it allows you to use short names for URLs.

    The idea is that you should be able to use short names in:

    • e-mail
    • instant messages
    • bulletin board posts
    • blog posts
    • wiki posts
    • ...and in your address bar.


    We can presently use LocalNames in most wiki (any wiki that supports InterLinks, [taoriver.net]) in WordPress [wordpress.org] blogs, and in Firefox browsers. [taoriver.net]

    The LocalNames spec doesn't describe what linking syntax should look like, but it'd generally be something like this: [[short name of URL][long text to link.]] So for example, you might write:

    "So, I was on [[Slashdot]] the other day, and I saw [[invisibility cloak][an incredible invisibility cloak!]]"


    Which would render out as:

    "So, I was on
    Slashdot [slashdot.org] the other day, and I saw an incredible invisibility cloak! [u-tokyo.ac.jp]


    The names lists support defaulting, so that you don't have to name every URL you like. If someone makes a names list you like, (for example, the contents of a wiki,) you can just default to it.

    There is already: a site for keeping your own names list, [taoriver.net] a web-browser redirection site, [taoriver.net] and a site for adapting a Wiki's title index into a Local Names list. [taoriver.net]

    Python programmers may be interested in the Python library reference names, [python.org] which you can use with FireFox [taoriver.net] to jump straight to any Python module's documentation.

    Bloggers may be interested in MooKitty [mookitty.co.uk]'s plug-in for WordPress [wordpress.org] that lets you use LocalNames in blog posts.

    Really, I get a little upset now when I have to look up URL's mid-post. I think, "Geeze, I've got the LocalName for this right on the tip of my tongue; Why do I have to actually resolve it to a URL myself, and then stick a href tags around it?"

    Once you start using short names for stuff, you never want to go back.

  • Safari hacks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jeriqo ( 530691 ) * <jeriqo&unisson,org> on Thursday September 09, 2004 @02:57AM (#10198422)
    - Sogudi [atamadison.com] allows to do almost the same thing with safari, though it is a bit different.
    For example :

    goo monkeys : will search google for monkeys
    goo site:monkeys : will search the current site on google for monkeys
    babfr www.yahoo.fr : will translate yahoo.fr from French to English using babelfish, etc.

    All of this configurable, of course.

    - Acid Search [pozytron.com] enhances the Safari's google search button, by adding a drop menu, so you can have more search engines, including Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature.

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