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Google Businesses The Internet

Google to Release Firefox Toolbar 348

Posted by samzenpus from the new-toolbar dept.
daria42 writes "Google is about to release a Firefox version of its toolbar, according to an e-mail sent to developers of the open source GoogleBar project. The e-mail claims to have been sent by Google engineer Fritz Schneider and is dated 1 July. "It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except of course for things like the popup blocker," the e-mail said (Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox)."
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Google to Release Firefox Toolbar More

Google to Release Firefox Toolbar

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  • FirefoogleBar (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I surprised they didn't name it "GooBar."

  • Linux 8.0?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nokilli ( 759129 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:01AM (#13000202)
    As per the email Google sent the GoogleBar guys. [mozdev.org]

    I knew being a Gentoo user would subject me to some delays while waiting for everything to compile, but this is ridiculous! 8.0!?! I'm still running 2.6.10!

  • That's great.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SnoopJeDi ( 859765 ) <snoopjedi&gmail,com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:03AM (#13000206)
    ...but really, I'm doing just fine setting Firefox's search box to use Google.

    • Re:That's great.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:06AM (#13000226)
      Isn't it set to Google by default?

      Honestly, what does the Google toolbar offer that Firefox doesn't already have, or that isn't already adequately covered by another extension?

      • Re:That's great.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:11AM (#13000249) Homepage
        The highlighter. And it looks a ton better.

        • Highlighter... (Score:2, Informative)

          by wvitXpert ( 769356 )
          Exactly, that is the one thing I have to have. I'm always searching for something that I can't find on the page and it's so nice to be able to just hit the highlight button and boom, there it is. Other than that I really have no use for a search field at all, I almost always just go to google.com for searches in safari for example (though I don't know why).

        • Re:That's great.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Chowderbags ( 847952 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @01:21AM (#13000551)
          There's a highlighter built into the find. Press control+f, type your word, and click the highlight.

          • Re:That's great.... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by MrFlannel ( 762587 )
            Except that find button isn't linked with what I just searched for, which really is nice.
            Often I find myself searcing for a technical spec, or whatnot, and I want to get to the part that I JUST saw in the little google preview blurb, since I know that's what I need. This just saves me from having to do anything but click the word on the tollbar.
      • Honestly, what does the Google toolbar offer that Firefox doesn't already have, or that isn't already adequately covered by another extension?
        Maybe an easy way to check PageRank? Or did someone else already make an extension for that and I missed it?

      • Re:That's great.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by WARM3CH ( 662028 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @03:25AM (#13000862)
        Honestly, what does the Google toolbar offer that Firefox doesn't already have, or that isn't already adequately covered by another extension?
        Highlighting the search terms (no, it is not the same as / or control+F), Showing the page ranks, One click translation of the page, Backward links, Showing the google cache for the page. The other feature I really missed in Firefox was google bar's excellent AutoFill feature to fill the forms with a relatively very high accuracy and the option to fill specific fields only by typing a password (like credit card info...)

    • Re:That's great.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by IANAAC ( 692242 )
      My thought was actually "How is this different than the googlebar I've been using in Firefox/Linux for months, now?"

      Looking at the screenshots, I don't see any difference in functionality. Only slight layout differences.

    • No doubt, it has more features then then the standard Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, etc google bar, but I find it fairly useless. All I see is features I don't need and browser clutter I don't want.

      At the very least, this thing should access all of Google's weird searches. Movies, Maps, etc.

      Also, it should be in Klingon.

    • Re:That's great.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @05:43AM (#13001191) Journal
      Having read the ctrl-f comment below: You cannot ctrl-f highlight multiple words.

      Having highlighting on a page from a search is nice, plus the PAGERANK is a useful tool in itself for web designers. I would be interested in this, although I loath to loose screen space.

      How about have the Menu bar hideable?

      I only ever use tools / extensions (page info being available on right click to get to media tab)

  • Yahoo's firefox toolbar (Score:5, Informative)

    by DarkHelmet433 ( 467596 ) * on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:03AM (#13000207)
    In case anybody's interested, yahoo's firefox toolbar has been around for a while. It worked out of the box for me on Linux and FreeBSD machines, including a 64-bit build of firefox for FreeBSD/amd64.
    http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox?fr=firefoxtoolbar [yahoo.com]

    • Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @03:56AM (#13000954)
      Yahoo does not get much respect here on slashdot but I can't figure out why. They give you two gigs of free email, they have a very nice messenger. They let you create a very nice portal of your own choosing. They give you a calender and other productivity apps. They let you publish your resume on line. They let you make your own home page. They have the firefox toolbar (and ie). They have IP telephony (costs too much but it's integrated with messenger). The list goes on and on.

      Google gets all the hype, yahoo gets no respect. I wonder why.

      • Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar (Score:4, Interesting)

        by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdot@ ... inus threevowels> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @08:23AM (#13001674)
        The only reason they have 2GB of email is because of Google. All of their services are ad-infested and crappy. The search engine sucks. I can't think of a single reason one would use Yahoo other than inertia.

      • Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar (Score:4, Interesting)

        by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @01:03PM (#13005007)
        > Google gets all the hype, yahoo gets no respect. I wonder why.

        They attach ads to all your outbound emails. This alone drives me away. I've taken to blocking all of yahoo's ads because they're so damn huge and intrusive, but since it bugs me ethically to frequently use their service with ads blocked, I just don't use their service.

        Yahoo's search is fine now, but they were leading the charge in "pay for placement" not two years ago. There's some interesting options like "save" and "block" in searches, but they appear to be no-ops. Seems to provide no value over google, really.

        Their toolbar is bundled with completely inappropriate things like acrobat, and shoveled onto my machine like so much spyware.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:03AM (#13000208) Homepage
    "Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox..."
    Uh, yeah, so is google. Isnt the entire point of the google toolbar to add an in bar google search and popup blocking to IE, which both Firefox and Opera already have? Whats the point of this?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by malarkey ( 514857 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:06AM (#13000231)
      The highlighting of the search terms in pages linked to by the results is not part of the "in-built" google search in Opera.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bhtooefr ( 649901 ) <bhtooefr@bhtooefr. o r g> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:06AM (#13000233) Homepage Journal
      There's also some page info stuff (possible to emulate with Bookmarklets, but not easy), the PageRank (only the One True Googlebar can do that), and text highlighting (a royal pain with bookmarklets, but the open source toolbar could do that. Besides, Firefox and Opera have inline search, making it unnecessary).

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by radish ( 98371 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:25AM (#13000329) Homepage
      I have googlebar installed on firefox - the number one reason is the way it creates a button for each search term to let you jump straight to that word on the page. No other search tool I'm aware of does that as nicely (though I'm happy to be proven wrong).
    • Unless the download page uses your useragent this could be a powerful tool for recruiting new people to firefox. Someone here's the googlebar is great and blocks pop-ups, they go to Google's site to get it and they see two versions, one for IE, one for firefox. What's firefox? *clicks the little download firefox icon which google has placed next to their toolbar download*
    • well, if it includes the blogspot stuff, I'd use it.

  • Why leave out the Pop-Up blocker? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:05AM (#13000216)
    There's at least one well-known extension for FireFox that's along these lines, and it's reasonably popular (AdBlock).

    Doesn't that indicate that a significant number of people would appreciate Google's crack it as well?

  • Not Entirely As Advertised (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NBarnes ( 586109 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:05AM (#13000217)
    Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox

    If only that were still true.... Sadly, the advertisers appear to be way ahead of the Mozilla devs on this one.

  • Google Compute (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:07AM (#13000234) Homepage
    I didn't RTFA but I wonder if this will enable me to participate in Google Compute [google.com]...
    • You don't have to run Google Compute to fold, even if you want to fold for Google...

      If you want to fold for team Google, install the Folding@home client from http://folding.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu], and set your team to 446.

      Why you'd want to do that, though, is beyond me. Fold for team 2630, instead - that way, you actually get to fold for a real team (The Tech Report). While you're at it, fold for the subteam (basically, a shared username) "dont_ya_mean_type" (without the quotes).
      • lol... how about i just send you my laptop while i'm at it? ;-)

        I think what sets Google Compute apart is the possibility of it running similarly to BOINC (in theory), in that it could participate in a series of challenges down the road, all through a simple interface. Sure you can go and install the individual clients, but the Google Compute feature is more likely something an average joe will use.

        sorta like the old SETI@home... when it was just a simple screensaver, it was easy to convince everybody

  • Why so late ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by karvind ( 833059 ) <karvind.gmail@com> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:18AM (#13000288) Journal
    I am not trying to be troll here, but why Google waited so long to provide the toolbar for a non-IE browser ?

    How about other neat google goodies like Google Desktop Search and Picasa photo organizer ? Any guess if they would provide these utilities for *nix too.

  • Googlebar has several other merits. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:22AM (#13000306)
    Beyond the obvious search bar, Googlebar has a few other useful functions that the default Firefox one does not have, such as the ability to search within one site. Something I use a lot is the ability to quickly jump to and highlight the keywords you've just searched for by clicking them in the bar. It makes finding relevant info. on a long page much easier.
    • Hit the / key. You have just started Find As You Type - type what you you want to find, and it will jump you right to it.
      • Do you know this is already in Firefox?

        At least it is for me. I click '/' and type, and it finds what I am looking for. Thanks for reminding me about the feature though - it is one of those I know exists but keep forgetting when I want to use it.
      • You're talking about the ability to search within one page, the original poster was asking for the ability to search within one site. Such as within the domain.

        Could be accomplished by adding site:slashdot.org to the query, or alternatively, Yahoo! toolbar for Firefox (has been there all along) has a search within the site button.
        • I wasn't replying to that. If I need to do that, then I'll stick the site: keyword into my query in the google search. What I was replying to was the OP saying "Something I use a lot is the ability to quickly jump to and highlight the keywords you've just searched for by clicking them in the bar." For that, Find As You Type (and ctrl-g to find again) works great.
      • I use this feature too. However, I also use the GoogleBar ability to highlight search terms (different colored highlights - just like a Google cache version of a page) on occasion. Sometimes it helps scan through a page and picking out groups of search terms that are significant versus the occasional hits that aren't significant. And I also use the clicky-clicky buttons to search within the page for terms... why retype?

        It seems to me that if type-ahead (or / search) was sufficient, I wouldn't be using t

  • And this changes things how??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rooked_One ( 591287 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:22AM (#13000309) Journal
    I'm using firefox

    I see the google search bar

    I don't think anyone goes to google for anything besides searching....

    My .000002 cents

  • the power of google... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord_of_the_nerf ( 895604 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:39AM (#13000392)
    Bill Gates: "Damn Google for stealing the last rational argument to stay with IE! Steve, get me my litigation hat!"
    Steve: *deep sigh* "I'm suing, I'm suing..."

  • Got an A for effort anyways (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bootard ( 820506 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @12:59AM (#13000476)
    While I think it's really cool that Google is giving a wink and a nod to alternative browsers, OSS, and the whole shebang, I have to wonder how useful this will be. I admit that it has been a long time since I had google toolbar for IE, but I only ever used it for two things: popup blocking and easy access to a google search. Firefox does those things already. So while I like their probable motivation, I don't know how useful the extra % or two of functionality is going to be.

    I think instead of porting the IE stuff to FF, google should use the easy extensibility of FF as a way for easy experimentation and come up with some wild stuff that hasn't been seen yet. Firefox is all early adopters; I think google would have great success on all fronts testing out all their really forward thinking ideas on FF and then porting the stuff that works well to IE. As it is, they are being a little inefficient here.

    (Cause providing the best search engine, the best free email, and google maps is nowhere near good enough, dammitl. Those lazy bastards aren't taking over the world quickly enough)

  • http://www.prgooglebar.org/ [prgooglebar.org]

    it has everything I need, I don't see why google would even bother when things like that exist.

    prGooglebar is based on another one:
    http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]

  • This is good news - Really (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nihilistcanada ( 698105 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @01:13AM (#13000519)
    I know some of you are going to run around with your hair on fire about the "man" using this toolbar to spy on us, etc... But really this is great news for FireFox. Firstly anyone who has used the IE Google Toolbar and tried the various FireFox extensions that mimic it know they are a good, but ulitmately a pale comparison to the original. The ease of use, and the fact that it simply works make the IE Google Toolbar a great, well, tool. I can't wait for the Firefox version. By Google releasing this it proves that FireFox is a big deal to the corporate world. Not IE big deal, but at least its a start. Plus with FireFox's ability to use extensions you have the best of both worlds, you can roll your own so to speak, or if you want a simple all in one, use the Google Firefox Toolbar. You have now one less reason to use IE and one more great one for using FireFox.

  • Yeah, I have this already (Score:3, Funny)

    by zig973 ( 841854 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @01:19AM (#13000542)
    It's called 'google '

  • what's new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LinuxRulz ( 678500 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @01:30AM (#13000580)
    I don't see the interest to install this. Firefox has almost (if not) all the features of that google bar:
    - Search and highlight within a page
    - Easy google,ebay,etc. search (using mycroft and its extensions)
    - Popup blocker (which works even better in combination with adblock)
    - Auto filling form fields
    - Browsing by names, instead of URLs
    Really, what's left? oh yeah, screen space lost for a useless bar full of existent features and colored O. Well, maybe I'll install it for the colorfull logo, since it fits well with my current theme but that's all! :)

  • Not redundant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_womble ( 580291 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @02:00AM (#13000651) Homepage Journal
    All those posts on the lines of "we have this already" are missing several points.

    Firstly, this is about choice. You can have the official Google toolbar or the alternatives. Google have even said they will continue to link to Googlebar so users know they have the choice

    Secondly, it is more likely to be used by non-geek users, simply becuase it comes from Google.

    Thirdly, it is very good publicity for Firefox - it will be mentioned in Google press releases, and on pages about the Google Toolbar.

    Fourthly, it will pressure others who have IE only extensions to produce Firefox versions - as Yahoo and Clusty already have.

  • popup blocking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tekoneiric ( 590239 )
    Anyone notice that Firefox has been getting more popups lately?

  • can't beat ctrl+k (Score:3, Informative)

    by krunk4ever ( 856261 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @02:24AM (#13000700) Homepage
    google toolbar may be nice and dandy, but if i recall correctly, they didnt have any hotkey features (maybe they'll have it in the firefox version). but i've gotta say, you just can't beat ctrl+k.

    if for every search, i had to take my right hand off the keyboard, move it to the mouse, click on the google toolbar, move my hand back to the keyboard, and enter my search phrase, then hit enter, i'd be so inefficient compared to how i am now.

    someone mentioned searching highlighted words. that may be nice a nice feature, but i'd prefer type ahead find. just type the word i want, and keep on hitting ctrl+g. no need to use the mouse at all. it's not as pretty nor as simple to use as google's, but it gets the job done.

    recently i changed my default search engine to A9. that was because i had recently made a purchase from amazon and my pi/2 discount disappeared. though 1.57% off isn't much, as a bargain hunter, it hurts me to not be able to save every penny i can, and it can take from 24hrs to 3 weeks after you start to use A9 again before the pi/2 discount returns. so as a precaution i switched over to A9 so it won't happen next time.

    to my surprise, A9 results were very close to google's on the things i searched for and i actually got what i need from A9 just as i would have in google. so now A9 has officially become my default CTRL+K.

    but i didn't get rid of google. it just takes 2 more key strokes. i made google a keyword and now all i have to do is:

    CTRL+L
    g keywords
    ENTER

    and google will work as if i did:

    CTRL+K
    keywords
    ENTER

  • About time we got the REST of the functionality. (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Pfeiffer ( 454131 ) on Thursday July 07, 2005 @02:54AM (#13000783) Homepage
    I've been waiting for this for a while. While I appreciate the utility of Firefox's built-in dedicated searchbar (I have wikipedia, dictionary.com, google, and imdb on mine), I miss the 'open cached version' right-click options you get with the IE google bar.

  • nice feature but.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John_Renne ( 176151 ) <zooiNO@SPAMgniffelnieuws.net> on Thursday July 07, 2005 @03:07AM (#13000812) Homepage
    I like the idea of the google toolbar, it brings some features that extend the functionality of the little google search-box that's default in firefox. On the other had, we got 83 search extentions for firefox at the moment. Will the google-bar just be another one in the list or will it actually bring something extra the others don't have..
  • Uh, I mean Yahoo, Yahoo did it. :P

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