Google Toolbar

Last updated

Google Toolbar
Developer(s) Google
Initial releaseDecember 11, 2000;23 years ago (2000-12-11) [1]
Final release
7.5.8231.2252 (Internet Explorer) / November 21, 2016 (Internet Explorer)
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Browser toolbar
License Proprietary freeware
Website www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html

Google Toolbar was a web browser toolbar for Internet Explorer, developed by Google. It was first released in 2000 for Internet Explorer 5 and above. Google Toolbar was also distributed as a Mozilla plug-in for Firefox from September 2005 to June 2011. On December 12, 2021, the software was no longer available for download, [2] and the main website now redirects to a support page, though a page still exists with the original page design. [3]

Contents

Features

Google Toolbar resided above the browser's tab bar and provided a search box to carry out web searches. Users could log into their Gmail accounts and access their email, saved bookmarks, and web history. It had tools such as AutoLink, AutoFill, Translation, and spell checker on all browsers. The pop-up blocker and word finder were restricted to Internet Explorer. [4] Google Toolbar was often distributed through product bundling with a primary download.

Sidewiki

Google Sidewiki was launched on September 23, 2009, allowing users to make comments, which were visible to the public, on any web page. [5] Google used ranking algorithms to determine comment relevancy and usefulness using criteria such as users voting up and down a comment and past contributions. Sidewiki was available for Internet Explorer and Firefox through Google Toolbar, the Google Chrome browser through an add-on, [6] and for other browsers, like Safari, it was available as a bookmarklet.

Web site owners could not control Sidewiki comments, [7] and there was no way for a web site to opt out of Sidewiki; however, Sidewiki was disabled on secure sites. [8]

In September 2011, Google announced that it would discontinue Sidewiki.

My Location

My Location was a geolocation service which uses the location of Wi-Fi access points to determine the toolbar user's location. [9] This location was used to optimize search results based on where the user was located. [9] Google Toolbar could also provide the geolocation data to third-party websites [9] through the W3C Geolocation API.

Google Toolbar was criticized when the AutoLink feature was added to the toolbar because this new feature directed users to pre-selected commercial websites. For example, if it found a book's ISBN on a webpage, it provided a link to Amazon's product page for the particular book. Google said that the feature "adds useful links" and "none of the companies which received AutoLinks had paid for the service."

Web caching

The desktop version of Google Toolbar showed the cached copy of any given search result, which was useful for slower Internet connections and benefitted by Google Web Accelerator until its discontinuation in 2008. This feature does not exist for the mobile version.[ citation needed ]

Privacy

Google Watch has raised concerns about Google Toolbar's possible threats to privacy, such as tracking of browsing patterns, automatic installation of updates without the user's knowledge, and a privacy policy that can be revised without notice. [10] The toolbar does not track personally identifiable surfing activities of the end user unless advanced features such as PageRank are specifically enabled by the user. [11] It does track "anonymous" statistics, which can reveal a lot of information when correlated with other data, although similar criticisms could be made of Google's online search engine. [12]

Google Compute

Google Compute was a separately downloadable add-on for the Google Toolbar which utilized the user's computer to help the Folding@home distributed computing project, which studies disease-relevant protein folding and other molecular dynamics. It was founded in March 2002 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Functionally, it downloaded a small packet of work, performed calculations on it, and uploaded it back to Stanford University. [13] Although it was limited in functionality and scope, it increased Folding@home's participation from 10,000 up to about 30,000 active CPUs. [14] The program ended in October 2005 in favor of the project's official clients, and is no longer available for the Toolbar. [15] [16]

Discontinuation

On December 12, 2021, Google Toolbar was quietly shut down by Google. The website redirected to Toolbar Support, stating the user should install Google Chrome instead, and showed instructions on how to uninstall Toolbar for those on Internet Explorer. Computers that still have Google Toolbar are not affected. [2] [3] It now redirects to Chrome Support.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web browser</span> Software used to access websites

A web browser is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. By 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people had used a browser. The most-used browser is Google Chrome, with a 66% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 18%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firefox</span> Free and open-source web browser by Mozilla

Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. Firefox is available for Windows 10 and later versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and other platforms. It is also available for Android and iOS. However, as with all other iOS web browsers, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform requirements. An optimized version is also available on the Amazon Fire TV as one of the two main browsers available with Amazon's Silk Browser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexa Internet</span> American web traffic analysis company (1996–2022)

Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites. It was acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Amazon discontinued the Alexa Internet service on May 1, 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Browser wars</span> Competition between web browsing applications for share of worldwide usage

A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" (1995–2001) consisted of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" (2004-2017) between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.

This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.

Browser hijacking is a form of unwanted software that modifies a web browser's settings without a user's permission, to inject unwanted advertising into the user's browser. A browser hijacker may replace the existing home page, error page, or search engine with its own. These are generally used to force hits to a particular website, increasing its advertising revenue.

Google Pack was a collection of software tools offered by Google to download in a single archive. It was announced at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, on January 6. Google Pack was only available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

NoScript is a free and open-source extension for Firefox- and Chromium-based web browsers, written and maintained by Giorgio Maone, a software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group.

A browser toolbar is a toolbar that resides within a browser's window. All major web browsers provide support to browser toolbar development as a way to extend the browser's GUI and functionality. Browser toolbars are considered to be a particular kind of browser extensions that present a toolbar. Browser toolbars are specific to each browser, which means that a toolbar working on a browser does not work on another one. All browser toolbars must be installed in the corresponding browser before they can be used and require updates when new versions are released.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yahoo Toolbar</span>

Yahoo! Toolbar is a browser plugin. It is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web development tools</span> Software used to test the UI of a website or web application

Web development tools allow web developers to test, modify and debug their websites. They are different from website builders and integrated development environments (IDEs) in that they do not assist in the direct creation of a webpage, rather they are tools used for testing the user interface of a website or web application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WOT Services</span> Website reputation service

WOT Services is the developer of MyWOT, an online reputation and Internet safety service which shows indicators of trust about existing websites. The confidence level is based both on user ratings and on third-party malware, phishing, scam and spam blacklists. The service also provides crowdsourced reviews, about to what extent websites are trustworthy, and respect user privacy, vendor reliability and child safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Chrome</span> Web browser developed by Google

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, where it serves as the platform for web applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Private browsing</span> Privacy feature in some web browsers

Private browsing is a feature in some web browsers that enhances user privacy. In this mode, the browser initiates a temporary session separate from its main session and user data. The browsing history is not recorded, and local data related to the session, like Cookies and Web cache, are deleted once the session ends. The primary purpose of these modes is to ensure that data and history from a specific browsing session do not remain on the device or get accessed by another user of the same device. In web development, it can be used to quickly test displaying pages as they appear to first-time visitors.

The W3C Geolocation API is an effort by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardize an interface to retrieve the geographical location information for a client-side device. It defines a set of objects, ECMAScript standard compliant, that executing in the client application give the client's device location through the consulting of Location Information Servers, which are transparent for the application programming interface (API). The most common sources of location information are IP address, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth MAC address, radio-frequency identification (RFID), Wi-Fi connection location, or device Global Positioning System (GPS) and GSM/CDMA cell IDs. The location is returned with a given accuracy depending on the best location information source available.

Google Sidewiki was a web annotation tool from Google, launched in September 2009 and discontinued in December 2011. Sidewiki was a browser extension that allowed anyone logged into a Google Account to make and view comments about a given website in a sidebar. Despite the name, the tool was not a collaborative wiki, though the comments were editable by the author.

The Conduit toolbar was an online platform that allowed web publishers to create custom toolbars, web apps, and mobile apps at no cost. It was developed by Conduit Inc. but demerged to Perion Network. Conduit had approximately 260,000 registered publishers who have collectively created content downloaded by more than 250 million end users. Web apps and pieces of content developed through Conduit's platform can be distributed and exchanged online via the Conduit App Marketplace. As of 2010, 60 million users consumed apps from the marketplace on a daily basis.

Browser security is the application of Internet security to web browsers in order to protect networked data and computer systems from breaches of privacy or malware. Security exploits of browsers often use JavaScript, sometimes with cross-site scripting (XSS) with a secondary payload using Adobe Flash. Security exploits can also take advantage of vulnerabilities that are commonly exploited in all browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Safe Browsing</span> Service that warns about malicious URLs

Google Safe Browsing is a service from Google that warns users when they attempt to navigate to a dangerous website or download dangerous files. Safe Browsing also notifies webmasters when their websites are compromised by malicious actors and helps them diagnose and resolve the problem. This protection works across Google products and is claimed to “power safer browsing experiences across the Internet”. It lists URLs for web resources that contain malware or phishing content. Browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, and GNOME Web use these lists from Google Safe Browsing to check pages against potential threats. Google also provides a public API for the service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Torch (web browser)</span> Proprietary, adware supported web browser

Torch was a Chromium-based web browser and Internet suite developed by the North Carolina–based Torch Media. As of November 2022, downloads for Torch are no longer available, and upon clicking the download button, users are redirected to the Torch Search extension on the Chrome Web Store.

References

  1. ↑ "Google Launches The Google Toolbar". December 11, 2000. Retrieved May 24, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Amadeo, Ron (December 12, 2021). "Take one last look at Google Toolbar, which is now dead". Ars Technica. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Install Google Toolbar - Toolbar Help". support.google.com. Retrieved December 20, 2021.
  4. ↑ "Google Toolbar Features" . Retrieved May 16, 2009.
  5. ↑ "Help and learn from others as you browse the web: Google Sidewiki". Google. September 23, 2009. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Chrome Web Store - Google Sidewiki". December 19, 2011. Archived from the original on December 19, 2011.
  7. ↑ Andrew Keen (September 24, 2009). "Sidewiki: Google colonial sideswipe". The Daily Telegraph. UK. Archived from the original on September 27, 2009. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  8. ↑ "How do webmasters opt out of sidewiki?" . Retrieved February 24, 2010.
  9. 1 2 3 "Toolbar Help" . Retrieved May 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ Google's new toolbar: Now more evil than ever
  11. ↑ "Does Wesley's Google Toolbar Invade Your Privacy? Not Really…". TechPluto. May 16, 2009. Retrieved May 17, 2009.
  12. ↑ Is Google too powerful? by Bill Thompson, BBC News, 2/21/2003
  13. ↑ Shankland, Stephen (March 22, 2002). "Google takes on supercomputing". CNet News.
  14. ↑ "Futures in Biotech 27: Folding@home at 1.3 Petaflops". December 28, 2007. Archived from the original (Interview, webcast) on November 29, 2011.
  15. ↑ ChelseaOilman (December 30, 2005). "Google is after your CPU cycles" . Retrieved September 6, 2011.
  16. ↑ "Your computer's idle time is too precious to waste". toolbar.google.com. 2007. Archived from the original on June 11, 2008. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.