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Google Businesses Mozilla The Internet IT

Google Toolbar for Firefox Released 277

Posted by Zonk from the new-toys dept.
fizz writes "Google has released their toolbar, available in 10 languages for the Firefox browser, and available for 3 operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux). You can download it from the Google Toolbar homepage, and you can read the Google Blog for more information." Reported on recently here on Slashdot.
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Google Toolbar for Firefox Released More

Google Toolbar for Firefox Released

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  • That's great and all (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:57PM (#13008981)
    But I think I speak for everyone on Slashdot when I ask when is Microsoft going to release the MSN Toolbar for Firefox?

    • Re:That's great and all (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pantero Blanco ( 792776 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:59PM (#13008999)
      Right after they get Microsoft Office and Outlook running on FreeBSD.

      • Re:That's great and all (Score:5, Funny)

        by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:07PM (#13009084)
        A long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away, I actually had Word 6.0 running on Solaris 2.6/SPARC, under WABI, which provided a Windows 3.1 environment. It worked slowly, but other than that, pretty well. In fact, I got a macro virus, Concept1. Was weird for the guy running Solaris to be able to identify to the company (all 8 of us) that we had a Word macro virus. They started to scrub the fileservers and eventually traced it back to a Word doc from a vendor.

        Who says microsoft doesn't do cross platform, I got a cross platform virus people, years before java.
        • Also a long time ago in a Galaxy far far away, Microsoft released Word 5.1 for Unix. It ran under SCO OpenDesktop 2.0 (this was OldSCO). It also ran (not as well) under Interactive Unix SysV/386.

          This was a port of Word 5.0 for DOS.

        • Word macro viruses and alternate OSs.... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @08:12PM (#13009622)
          I used a Mac at the time and had numerous instances of identifying viruses in Word macros sent to me by windows users. The Mac version of Word didn't play macros automatically and warned that there was a suspicious one, and Disinfectant 3.7 could identify them. The reactions I would get from windows users is first a smug "Hah! You told me macs didn't have any virus problems" ... then after explaining that my Mac at best was functioning as a kind of typhoid mary for viruses that didn't have any impact on the system I'd hear, "oh, so it's nothing to worry about then"... a bit of convincing to get them to fire up an antivirus program that scans Word files for such macros and then "Holy shit! this thing is all over my system!" How little things change sometimes.... Of course I pulled that Disinfectant version number out of my ass but for some reason I suspect it is accurate.

          [by the way the Mac of the time, while far more secure than the windows of the time, certainly had its share of problems. The autostart worm was a particularly nasty one that I was lucky enough never to get bit by. ]

      • Gee. I want ALL my software vendors to inject spyware into my browser as a component!

    • Re:That's great and all (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:04PM (#13009054) Homepage
      A million monkeys. A million keyboards. MSN Toolbar. Let it get in YOUR way!
    • You know,
      Yahoo has a toolbar for FF,
      there is/was the PRGooglebar for FF,
      now Google has officially released a toolbar for FF,
      MSN is really last again and I wonder if they'll release a tool for FF for search.

      I also wonder if Google went ahead and did this to kind of force MS to support the competition.
    • I am still waiting for Microsoft to release a version of Internet Explorer for Linux.

  • Technically, it's not a dupe.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrentL ( 761772 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @06:59PM (#13009002) Homepage
    Since the article earlier today [slashdot.org] said they were "about to" release the toolbar.

  • Its cool (Score:5, Informative)

    by ResQuad ( 243184 ) <{slashdot} {at} {konsoletek.com}> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:00PM (#13009014) Homepage
    The only problem I have with it is the doube google search box.

    • Re:Its cool (Score:5, Informative)

      by richardablitt ( 897338 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:15PM (#13009174) Homepage
      You can always right click on one of the toolbars, go to customise (or customize), and drag off the other google box. It is kind of unnecessary, since firefox already has the search box and pop-up blocking installed, which were the two main features it added to IE. (I know there's more, but those were the main ones for me).
      • Now I can finally spell check my reply. I do not need to highlight my blog and paste it into my open office writer to do the spell check then correct any misspelled words and do the reverse by pasting it back into this page.

        • Re:Its cool (Score:3, Funny)

          by owenb ( 91248 )
          Yes, know yore reply is guaranteed to bee prefect
        • Now I can finally spell check my reply. I do not need to highlight my blog and paste it into my open office writer to do the spell check then correct any misspelled words and do the reverse by pasting it back into this page.

          Yeah, because nobody ever created a spellchecker extension for firefox before, such as SpellBound [sourceforge.net] ... lucky Google came to the rescue, huh?

          And to think, there wasn't a dedicated Google search bar in firefox before, either ...
    • Which of course I removed - thanks to everyone that replied. I also tried out the auto-linking. It does work as advertised. The spell check is rather nifty too. You can spell check even as little as what you type into the box on google.com (one line) or this entire post. (This Post spellchecked thanks to Google!)

    • The only problem I have with it is the doube google search box.

      get rid of it and do it the smart [mozilla.org] way.

      note to knee-jerkers: before you jump allover yourselves, no it does not defeat the purpose, because the google toolbar isnt just for searching, it has a lot of other goodness too.

    • Since this seems to be the bitch thread.

      My complaint is that I still use Windows 98se as my windows box, not XP. I guess I can't expect them to support a 7 year old OS, but it would be cool of them to do so. Oh well. The reasons to 'upgrade' are starting to add up.

  • It works on Linux!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by utopicillusion ( 843168 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:00PM (#13009016)
    It works on Linux, even on PPC ones. Finally, google released a product for Linux users.

    Does this mean that Google is going to migrate some more of their products from Google Labs http://labs.google.com/ [google.com] on linux now?

  • Foogle-Gox and the future: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:02PM (#13009027)
    Will this tool bar replace the default Firefox Google homepage? Sponsorship is what it's all about, after all, no? Do you really think that Firefox developers will tolerate such redundancy? My bet is on the discontinuation of the homepage paired with a default Google Toolbar installation.
    • If we were talking about a non-free browser, the company making the browser could probably earn some money by including another company's toolbar. They could probably even earn money by setting a default home page. Is the Mozilla Foundation making money by making a Google page the default home page?

  • Other toolbars? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jaymaedae ( 851325 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:02PM (#13009029)

    Does anyone have suggestions for other toolbars that are useful that work in Firefox? I am sure auto-complete is just scratching the surface. ( That's really all I use the google toolbar for anyway...in IE)

  • Google /.'ed (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whats this toolbar.google.com is /.'ed? How ironic!
  • Get slashdotted... Don't they have like mega bandwidth available? It took almost a minute for the page to load up. Got the toolbar though, will try it out next... Raydude
  • When will it be released for Opera? You can search Google from Opera, but it doesn't have the highlighter and collapsable tree function that the toolbar has.

  • Other (Google) Firefox Extensions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The boojum ( 70419 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:03PM (#13009049)
    Actually, I find the "other Firefox extensions" [google.com] link almost more interesting. The Google Suggest extension [google.com] looks pretty darn slick.

  • "Toolbars" make me uncomfortable... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:08PM (#13009092) Homepage Journal
    /tinfoil hat on Maybe it's just due to the abundance of spyware that disguises themselves as browser toolbars (I cringe everytime I see a MySearch toolbar running on an acquaintances IE), but it's more due to the fact that integrating my open-source browser with a proprietary piece of software is apt to open up all kinds of privacy issues like making me more vulnerable to a single entity (in this case Google) tracking all my online activity, searches, form information, etc.

    I know Google tracks and logs every search query by IP address, but it's these persistent session pieces like the GMail cookies, "Personalized results" etc, that I find scarier. And what's more, a large number of people tend to use their full names as Email IDs (moreso for an attractive email service like GMail, which can be used as a formal email account for most purposes), which gives Google a way to directly map People Names to Google Searches.

    /tinfoil hat off

  • Not enough features.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mislam ( 755292 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:08PM (#13009098) Homepage
    I do not see enough features in the toolbar to let it occupy 25% (ok maybe less) of my browsers tool space.

    • Re:Not enough features.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SavvyPlayer ( 774432 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:40PM (#13009356)
      Nice to see this in Firefox, but I must confess some disappointment with the latest release. There is plenty of room to the right of the menu bar for all of the Google Toolbar features, however Google chose instead to gobble up a 4th row of buttons along the top of the window. Google chose the shortest path from point A (IE toolbar) to point B (straight port), not taking the time to properly implement Firefox's UI guidelines: its buttons are neither dockable or aware of the "show icons, text or icons + text" user preference.

      This isn't rocket science. When hiring offshore IT talent, does Google translate its requirements via http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en [google.com] ?

    • One of my favourite features of Firefox (the so-called "killer feature" that keeps me from switching to Konqueror) is the ability to have every single relevant button on one line. The single toolbar of my Firefox has the context menus, the back, forward, refresh, and stop buttons, and the location bar. It takes only a bit of space on my browser and leaves the rest of the space on my browser to actually browse.

      I can't stand using Firefox on another computer especially with a lower resolution!

  • might as well (Score:5, Funny)

    by buddha42 ( 539539 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:09PM (#13009102)
    Google should just CNAME pr.google.com to slashdot.org
  • Now we can have 2 Google toolbars in FF. One from the previous /. article and this one.

  • any way to move it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by supersuckers ( 841107 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:11PM (#13009121) Homepage
    I have it installed in my firefox in gentoo... is there any way to move the darn thing? It takes up a lot of real estate, I'd like to get rid of most of the buttons and move it to where the google search that comes with firefox used to reside.

  • Too late... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wviperw ( 706068 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:11PM (#13009126) Homepage Journal
    When I was first thinking about converting to Firefox I remember that Google's toolbar was the "killer app" that initially kept me from switching over. Then I realized that I could do pretty much everything I could do using Google's IE-only toolbar using Firefox extensions and its built-in capabilities.

    For example, for instant Google searches, Firefox allows you to create Keyword Searches in which you can just type in, in my case, "g <search query>" in the URL bar. Or for Wikipedia it is "w <search query>". For word highlighting you can just use Firefox's search functionality. And finally, for AutoFill you can use the AutoFill [mozdev.org] extension (which ends up being better than Google's anyway IMO).

    So basically, Firefox has rendered the Google toolbar pretty useless to me.
    • For example, for instant Google searches, Firefox allows you to create Keyword Searches in which you can just type in, in my case, "g " in the URL bar. Or for Wikipedia it is "w ".

      *sigh*

      Make a wild guess which browser had this feature first.

  • All Fluff. (Score:3, Informative)

    by smug_lisp_weenie ( 824771 ) * <cbarski.4503440@bloglines.com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:15PM (#13009164) Homepage
    The only thing this toolbar does that Firefox doesn't already is give pagerank- But there's a great site [top25web.com] that'll let you do all this anyway. Otherwise, I recommend looking at open source Firefox extensions and YubNub.com (which integrates beautifully into firefox) for your enhancement needs!
  • Now I can replace the built-in Mozilla search facility with a new, Google approved model that will "anonymously" monitor my browsing habits.

    Great!

  • What's the benefit? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lhbtubajon ( 469284 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:17PM (#13009188)
    Why would I install this toolbar when I have instant search access to google built in to Firefox already?

    Obviously the google toolbar offers a few bells and whistles, but I'll never use them. I just want to search.

    So, the Google toolbar for IE makes sense, this one not so much.

    Am I missing something?

    Are those bells and whistles something worth sacrificing half an inch of screen real estate?

  • Gee, google, that's swell (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:19PM (#13009204) Homepage Journal
    But I can use the Yahoo Toolbar [yahoo.com] on any platform that firefox runs on (any *BSD, solaris, etc). Because they had the smarts to write it in XUL (?) or what ever the native mozilla toolkit/extention language is.

  • Is this an official google toolbar? I use the open source googlebar http://googlebar.mozdev.org/index.html [mozdev.org]. I wonder how long before google flexes legal muscle to shut down googlebar. I recall previously that the google legal team forced googlebar to change their logo so as to not dilute the google brand. I recall reading the legal agreement and there was wording about google being able to change their minds in the future if they release their own product.
    • I wonder how long before google flexes legal muscle to shut down googlebar.

      How 'bout never?

      Not only are they aware of googlebar, but they are apparently appreciative of the product and have been modestly supporting it with a link from the official Google bar page:

      Letter from Google to googlebar [mozdev.org]

      • I predict within 6 months there will be a request from Google for googlebar to stop using googlebar as the name of the extension.

        Its was in Feb 2005 that someone at google requested that the name be changed and that the logo be changed. Only the logo was changed. I wish I could dig up the legal letter, but I recall the agreement basically said we can change our minds at anytime. (ie; there really was no legal agreement).

  • Far from as useful as on IE (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @07:42PM (#13009373) Journal
    Google Search -- integrated
    AutoLink -- US use only; most stuff don't work outside US, and even then a limited usefulness
    WordTranslator -- limited use; only useful if you must understand e.g. a french site, and even if you do, there are non-toolbar extensions for this
    Pop-up blocker -- integrated
    AutoFill -- as far as I can see, Firefox' form saving system works well enough here
    SpellCheck -- useful!
    PageRank -- why should I have a use for it? diagnosing rank issues with my own sites? seems like highly limited use
    Highlight search terms -- integrated
    Word find -- integrated

    An entirely new toolbar for this? Hmm... I can get the spell checking elsewhere [sourceforge.net] without one, and besides that, it seems a bit much.
  • The extension I just removed before installing google toolbar had a few more features, the most useful of which is the EDU search. The official google toolbar doesn't seem to have this.
  • is the autolink to google maps. Since I can't customize the toolbar, I am uninstalling it now. - I don't care about having a google searchbar, thats what the addressbar in firefox is for (just type "google computer store" to search for "computer store"). - I certainly don't need a button to search for news on google. How often would you use that? - Spell check could be useful, but do I really need a button for the few times I would use it? - Do I really need an options button? Couldn't that be a menu or
  • The translate function really needs more languages, and needs to be able to look up words from foriegn languages into your native language (e.g., Japanese to English).

  • The two main things I liked about the IE google toolbar, quick access to the Google cache of the visited page, and a list of referring links to the current page, aren't in the Firefox toolbar. Without those, it provides no benefit to me -- I could already search Google from the Firefox search tool. Uninstalling.
  • One reason to use the toolbar is to have everyone you know install it and surf your site, thus sending back info to Google that people visit your site. Also have those same people search on your keywords and then click through to your site.
  • Will this Firefox port work with Mozilla? Or do I have to wait for a Mozilla port?

    Thanks in advance. :)
    • chances are very good that it will work with Mozilla, but I can't say for sure because the numbskulls at google have decided to protect me from myself and blocked access to the XPI based on some lame browser detection javascript. I'm sure I can get around it but I can't be arsed for the little benifit the toolbar would bring me. Personally I just have google set as my homepage and a new google search is as simple at ctrl-t alt-home, muscle memory means it takes a fraction of a second to perform.
  • Google released a "send text message to phone" which works for U.S. mobile phone numbers.

    They also released an extension with 'suggestions', just like at Google Suggest [google.com].

    Get them both, along with the toolbar, at http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/ [google.com]

  • Goodbye Spellbound! Thank you very much for your service, it was well appreciated, but you made me look the fool too many times in forum posts. I still love you but Google's spell checker is more thexy :)

  • I installed the toolbar from Google Toolbar homepage and all it did was cause Firefox to run reallly really slow. It wouldn't even open until I killed a script that was running.

    Conversly, I installed the Google Toolbar from http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org] and absolutly no problems at all...
    • Funny thing ... I just wasted an hour or so discovering the same problem, and finally getting the toolbar uninstalled.

      One question: Is there any way to tell what things in firefox (or mozilla) are running what cpu-eating things? I've got the Prefbar and Flashblock installed; I'm blocking image animation, java, javascript and flash, and still FF and mozilla are each eating 10% to 20% of my cpu.

      It likely has something to do with a lot of tabs I have open to sites that I'm following. Presumably the cpu us

  • Guess I'll just have to bite the bullet ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @09:41PM (#13010149) Homepage Journal
    ... and finally learn how to uninstall these damned things.

    I made the mistake of deciding to give it a try on my Mac Powerbook (10.3.9). Bad mistake. This was typed to the Camino browser, because now my FF is all but unusable.

    To use an example that /. users can appreciate, I fired up a FF window that has two tabs, with the expected slashdot.org and slashdot.org/users.pl in them. I then opened a third tab with the Google Toolbar discussion, and waited for its busy wheel to stop spinning ... and waited ... and waited ... until finally, after several minutes the spinning froze. Another minute, and it hadn't moved. I hit the little stop-sign icon, and after a while, FF sorta came back.

    So I tried opening a new FF window, using CMD-N as usual. Nothing. I tried it a few more times. Nada. No errors, no windows. I guessed that CMD-N was dead.

    So I started playing with a few other things in the /. window. CMD-click did open a couple more tabs, all of which hung in the "frozen busy" state. I tried a few ways of getting menus; none worked. Clicking on a tab would bring it to the front, but click-hold never produced a menu. Neither did click-hold inside a tab.

    WTF?

    Then, after maybe 10 minutes, a set of blank windows suddenly appeared. So CMD-N isn't dead; it just takes 10 minutes. Now, I'd gotten used to FF taking 30 seconds on OSX, unlike my (slower ;-) linux box where it takes between 2 and 3 seconds. But 10 minutes is way past what I'd call marginally usable.

    Then, a few minutes later I saw a whole lot of menus flashing above the FF window where I was viewing /., meaning that the menus aren't dead, either. They're just so slow as to be unusable.

    So it looks like I'll have to hunt down this Toolbar and excise it. Too bad I didn't get a chance to try it. Well, actually, I did. I typed in a search string and hit Return - and the window became a zombie. And my cpu was pegged at 100%, with Activity Monitor saying that Firefox was hung. I got my cpu back by hitting the little 'x' "close" icon for the window, and after a minute or so it went away, and cpu usage dropped.

    I wonder where I can find the docs on removing the little monster? I'd sure like my firefox back.

    • I seem to have succeeded in deleting the damned google toolbar. I even found the info in the google toolbar docs (using another browser, of course, since FF was a zombie).

      And they didn't work. There were two ways listed, and both failed for the same reason. They seemed to want to pop up a new window to handle the job - and the window never appeared. Not even after 15 minutes of letting the "busy" icon spin.

      Furthermore, attempting to get such a window put FF into an even more bizarre state that I've ne
  • Am I the only person who normally finds Google's offerings interesting, but this to be useless and extremely late in coming? Using AutoFill and SpellBound, combined with Firefox's built-in Google search bar with its own drop-down list, I find the Google toolbar to be a huge waste of screen space. I'd much rather put my 50+ RSS feeds across the top and save the rest of my screen space.

  • Didn't see a single thing I need to use.

    Already got Google search on my address bar as it is with Firefox.

    And I can already spell.

    Never need to translate words FROM English, and any software I've seen translating INTO English sucks.

    Rest of the stuff is just worthless to me.

    Oh, well. I only have four Firefox extensions installed (Flashblock, keyconfig, Download Manager Tweak, and Netcraft Toolbar - and the latter is of questionable value until I actually find a suspicious site being flagged) as it is.

  • Superb dictionary! (Score:2, Informative)

    by sankyuu ( 847178 )

    Now is my first time to use Google toolbar (or any other browser toolbar add-on), and I find the dictionary superb!

    I'm running Japanese firefox and it translates any English word that I hover my mouse on into Japanese. And Firefox doesn't seem slowed down one bit! The "magic" of AJAX, I suppose...

    Now to see if it translates other languages into Japanese... ^_^

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