Google Toolbar for Firefox Discontinued, IE Version Will Live On

[zeon22]

Google Toolbar for Firefox Discontinued, IE Version Will Live On

Google has been doing some housekeeping lately and it's killing off products and projects that no longer make sense. One of those, apparently, is the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

While the company hasn't specifically said it's discontinuing it, it does say that it won't work with anything after Firefox 4 and that there will be no more updates.

"As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the browser space. For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser," Google said. "Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions," it explained.

Google says that Firefox already has many of the features that the toolbar offered. For those that it doesn't, there are alternatives, the company added.

Google launched the Google Toolbar a decade ago for Internet Explorer 6 and, at the time, it added quite a lot of functionality that was missing in the Microsoft browser.

Later, when the Firefox version was launched, it too enhanced the new Mozilla browser. But now that Firefox is packed full of features, it has become redundant.

Then again, Internet Explorer 9 comes with a lot of the functionality offered by the Google Toolbar as well, but the IE version has just been updated and there's no sign of it getting shut down.

A more likely scenario is that the IE version gets a lot of use while the Firefox version doesn't. This is just speculation, but it does make sense. You can pin that down on the different type of users the two browsers have.

While Google hasn't officially updated the Firefox toolbar for newer versions, it still works, as Google Operating System noticed, you just have to install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension for Firefox.

This way, you can run the toolbar in Firefox 5, Firefox 6, Firefox 7 and so on. Of course, with no updates, compatibility will eventually break.

Source

[oZ.]

good

[DKT27]

That's bad news for me. I have lots of buttons in Google toolbar. Both original and customized ones. :(

[Knightmare]

All toolbars suck anyway. They slow down everything and provide features that can be found elsewhere.

[DKT27]

Mozilla jumps to deal with Google Toolbar demise

Google has canceled its toolbar for the current and future versions of Firefox, and Mozilla is scrambling to help users who might be left in the lurch and postponing their browser upgrades.

The toolbar offers a variety of services, including a search box, a way to use bookmarks stored on a server, and a measurement of a Web site's PageRank--a score Google gives that measures its influence in Google search results. But Google has chosen to do in the Firefox version.

"As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the browser space. For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser. Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions," Google said this week on a help page.

Mozilla is looking into options for what to do next, setting up a meeting to address the matter.

"We know that a large amount of users are not taking update offers to 5+ due to Google Toolbar incompatibility," said Firefox release manager Christian Legnitto in meeting notes. "Many users likely expect a new version of Google toolbar to be released and marked compatible."

He said Mozilla has two problems: telling people the toolbar won't arrive and helping them extract whatever data they have stored with it. But there's not much time to respond if Mozilla wants to act fast.

"Firefox 3.6.20 (code freeze is 2011-08-01) would be the earliest vehicle we can use to change the product," he said, a move that "will allow us to push product changes before users get update offers to [Firefox] 5+."

Firefox updates have always posed a problem for those who offer add-ons to the browser, but the problem has changed in nature with Firefox's rapid-release cycle, in which new versions arrive as soon as every six weeks.

To minimize the likelihood that users are presented with incompatibility messages when add-ons encounter a version of Firefox newer than what they're certified to work with, Mozilla has begun automatically "bumping" the add-on's compatibility version number for add-ons that don't cause problems.

That only applies to those add-ons distributed by Mozilla itself, though, and the Google Toolbar for Firefox comes directly from Google.

Google wouldn't say if other factors besides browser advancement were part of its decision to cancel the toolbar.

Spokeswoman Lily Lin did, though, detail some of the toolbar features it now sees in the browser:

• Suggest is in the Firefox Awesome Bar

• Autofilll is in the browser

• Custom searches from the Awesome Bar

• Spell-checker

• Bookmark sync

• Search box

Those desperate for the toolbar--search-engine optimization experts are one group that particularly values the PageRank score--can use a version for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Google wouldn't comment about whether it plans to discontinue the IE version.

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