Google Related

Google Toolbar 7.1 for Internet Explorer has a new feature that shows Web pages, news articles, places, images and videos related to the current page. The feature is called Google Related and it's a bar displayed at the bottom of the page.

"Google Related is a browsing assistant that offers interesting and useful content while you are browsing the web. For instance, if you're browsing a page about a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will assist you by displaying useful information about this restaurant such as the location of the restaurant on a map, user reviews, related restaurants in the area, and other webpages related to San Francisco restaurants - all in one place," explains Google.


If you go to the Wikipedia article about Adele, Google Related shows 5 YouTube videos, 5 articles from Google News and 5 pages from Google Search.


Google Related is another feature that requires sending the list of all the pages you visit to Google's servers. To find related pages, Google needs to know the URL of the page you're visiting. The so-called "enhanced features" (PageRank, SideWiki, Google Related) send Google a lot of useful data. One of the most interesting ways to use the data is a feature that shows if a site is slow. Like all the other Google Toolbar "enhanced features", Google Related can be disabled from the "Options" dialog by clicking the "Privacy" tab.


Apparently, Google Related only works if you've configured the toolbar's search site to be Google.com (United States of America - .com), so you may need to change this setting to enable Google Related.

Google Toolbar for Firefox Has Been Discontinued

Another Google product bites the dust. This time it's a popular add-on: Google Toolbar for Firefox. Many users were surprised to see that Google hasn't updated the toolbar for Firefox 5, even though it wasn't a difficult task. After enabling the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, most of the features worked well in Firefox 5.

It turns out that Google no longer wants to update Google Toolbar for Firefox, but it doesn't admit that the product has been discontinued.

"Google Toolbar for Firefox is compatible with Firefox version 4 or older. If you use Firefox version 5 or newer, you won't be able to use Google Toolbar."


Google suggests a long list of add-ons that could replace Google Toolbar's features, but the suggestions are too generic. For example, Google links to the search results for [bookmarks sync] or [language translate] in the Firefox add-ons gallery.

A Google blog post offers an explanation: "many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser" and thanks the loyal users. That's also true for the IE toolbar, but there are many useful features that aren't included in the browser: auto-translation (a built-in Chrome feature), Google Bookmarks integration, using Google Docs to open documents, smart spell-checking using an online service, highlighting search terms, suggestions for navigation errors (another built-in Chrome feature), custom buttons and gadgets.

You probably remember that Google Toolbar for Firefox was released in 2005, five years after the Internet Explorer version. At that time, Firefox users who wanted to install a Google Toolbar with PageRank support could try an unofficial extension called Googlebar. Maybe that extension will be resurrected, now that Google Toolbar for Firefox is no longer available. Releasing some of the source code under an open-source license would be helpful.

For now, Google Toolbar still works in the latest Firefox releases if you install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter first and restart the browser. Here's Google Toolbar in Firefox 7 Alpha 2 (Aurora):


Last year, Microsoft's Bing Bar dropped support for Firefox and became an Internet Explorer-only add-on, just like Google Toolbar. Bing Bar is powered by Silverlight, a software for running rich internet applications. A few months ago, Google tested a new Google Toolbar powered by Chrome, but only for Internet Explorer. It's likely that the new toolbar didn't work well in Firefox, so Google decided to only offer an Internet Explorer version.

{ Thanks, Colar. }

Enable Google Toolbar in Firefox 5

If you've installed Firefox 5 and noticed that Google Toolbar wasn't updated to support the new Firefox release, there's a simple way to enable the extension: install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter. "After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you're using." This should only be a temporary solution until Google Toolbar and other extensions update their compatibility list.



Google Toolbar 7 works well in Firefox 5, especially considering that the new Firefox version didn't make too many important extension-related changes.

Firefox's faster release cycle, inspired by Google Chrome, has an important downside: extension developers need to update their extensions more frequently and update the list of Firefox versions that are supported. Mozilla alleviated this problem by automatically marking almost 4,000 extensions as compatible with Firefox 5, but Google Toolbar is not hosted by Mozilla and it's downloaded from Google's servers.

Google Toolbar 7 for Internet Explorer

Google launched a new version of its toolbar for Internet Explorer, but it's only for IE8 and IE9. Google Toolbar 7 focuses on search: there's support for Google Instant, the search box is a lot bigger and all the other features are available in the "More" drop-down.


There's a funny help center article titled "Where did my buttons go?" which answers the most obvious question after installing Google Toolbar 7.

"You may have noticed that some or all of your Toolbar buttons have disappeared with the latest update of Toolbar. The newest version of Toolbar helps you focus on the features you use the most, by removing your less frequently used buttons from view. If you've recently used a specific Tool on your Toolbar, its button will be pinned to the Toolbar so that you have easy access to it. Otherwise, all buttons are removed by default. Don't fret -- you can easily add your favorite features back to the Toolbar. Click More next to the search box and select the tool that you want to add. It'll automatically appear back on the Toolbar."

So Google Toolbar features are less discoverable, users lost some of their preferences, but the toolbar is less cluttered.

Google Instant integration is not enabled by default, but you can open the options dialog and check "Enable Instant for faster searching and browsing".


For some reason, Google also installs Google Toolbar 7.1 for Firefox, which is an old version of toolbar and doesn't include the new features. The extension can be uninstalled from Control Panel, not from Firefox.

Google Toolbar 8, Powered by Google Chrome

After Google released Chrome, Google Toolbar's development slowed down. That's because Google Toolbar is no longer the primary vehicle for adding browser features and Google mostly focused on improving Chrome.

Google Toolbar 8 is a completely new version of Google's add-on that was available as part of Google Labs. "Google Toolbar 8 is actually built and runs on top of the Google Chrome Frame platform. This means that Toolbar 8 will run more like a web app in that it can be customized and updated much more frequently and easily. It also means that Google Chrome Frame is installed at the time of Toolbar 8 installation," explains Google.


The new version of Google's toolbar only works in Internet Explorer right now and it doesn't include all the features that are currently available in the latest public version. Google included some new features: buttons for the most visited sites, Google Dictionary integration and Google Instant. "Google Toolbar displays up to seven of your most visited sites as buttons. Click on a button to go directly to its site. When you download the new Google Toolbar your toolbar will display buttons for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Youtube, Google News, Google Reader and Google Tasks by default."

How to Install Google Quick Search Box

Google has recently discontinued Quick Search Box for Windows, which was included in Google Toolbar. If you liked the application, there's a way to use it, even if it's no longer available in Google Toolbar.


1. If you already have Google Toolbar for IE, it's likely that the toolbar has been updated to the latest version and you need to uninstall it. Just click the arrow next to the Google Toolbar wrench and select "Uninstall".

2. Install an older version of Google Toolbar for IE (6.3).

3. Now you can install the latest version of Google Toolbar from toolbar.google.com or wait until the application updates itself. You can also install the most recent version from FileHippo.

Quick Search Box for Windows, Discontinued

Quick Search Box, a small Google application bundled with Google Toolbar, is no longer available for Windows. The software was both a program launcher and a Google search box instantly available even if your browser is closed.

"At Google, we like to launch early and often, and iterate on our products. We often experiment with new features in Toolbar and sometimes we have to decide how best to focus our efforts on features we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run. Along these lines, the Quick Search Box feature will no longer be available in Google Toolbar. At this time we have no plans to release it separately, but I'll keep the community informed if these plans change. Thanks to all the users who helped us test and improve the feature," says Brian Rose, from Google.


Quick Search Box is still available for Mac, iPhone and Android, but each flavor of the application has different features. I think it would be a good idea to add all the features from QSB for Mac to the Windows version and release it as a standalone application. It could be a lightweight alternative to Google Desktop, an extensible open source application that lets you search the files from your computer and your online data from services like Gmail or Google Docs.

{ Thanks, Marcus. }

Share Web Pages and Your Location in Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar 6.4 for IE and Firefox adds a feature that lets you share web pages using social networking sites, mail services, bookmarking services and other sites. You can select your favorite services from the settings page or repeatedly click on one of the options to bring it to the top of the menu.


If you share links using Twitter, you'll notice a new URL shortening service: goo.gl. "Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. The core goals of this service are: stability, security and speed." The service is only used by Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, so there's no web interface or API for goo.gl.

Another new Google Toolbar feature implements W3C's geolocation API, which allows web pages to access detailed information about the locations of their visitors. "We use information transmitted by nearby WiFi access points to determine your approximate location. Accuracy and coverage will vary by location, and we're working to improve both over time," explains Google. This feature is already available in Firefox 3.5, so Google only added it to the IE version of Google Toolbar.


One of the few sites that use the geolocation API is Google Maps: "visit Google Maps and click the My Location button above the zoom slider. Click Share my location if you give your permission for Google Maps to use your location, and the map should center on your approximate location, if available."

{ via Google Blog }