Google Goodies for Firefox Users

Google has finally decided add support for Firefox users with its latest release of Google Toolbar for Firefox. It also came up with two other useful extensions for Firefox users.

Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer was one big reason why many users hesitated to move over to Firefox. Googlebar, an independent Open Source project came to the rescue, providing Google engineers time to fill the void. And finally they have.

Google continues to link to Googlebar from its Google Toolbar site as a show of gratitude, I suppose. I use Googlebar and I will attest that it is an excellent product.

Google Toobar comes with an enticing array of features, notably:

The controversial AutoLink button. In their own words:

The online review of a great new restaurant has the place’s address but no map. You could type the restaurant’s street, city, and ZIP code into the search box, but why bother, when clicking the Toolbar’s AutoLink button will automatically create a link to an online map (US addresses only)? AutoLink can also link package tracking numbers to delivery status, VIN numbers (US) to vehicle history, and publication ISBN numbers to Amazon.com listings.

The Word Translator feature which automatically translates words in your language when you hover your mouse cursor over the word. WordTranslator currently supports translation from English into Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German and Spanish. It can prove immensely useful for non-native English speakers worldwide.
BTW: I would actually like it to translate the above languages to English for me.

It comes with other well known toolbar features like popup- blocking, Google Page Rank display etc.

What I don’t like about Google Toolbar:
Updates are installed automatically. I want more control over the process.

Google may collect information about web pages that you view when you use advanced features such as PageRank, SpellCheck, AutoLink, and WordTranslator.

These advanced features can be disabled or re-enabled at any time by selecting “Privacy Information” under “Help” in the Toolbar’s “Google” menu. How many would do it in practice?

In Summary:
I would continue with Googlebar for now because of privacy concerns and because it is tried and tested and works well for me. However I laud Google for moving forward to support Firefox users and would encourage everyone to at least give it a whirl.

Additionally Google came with two useful extensions for Firefox users:

Extension to send text messages of web page content to your mobile phone (U.S. numbers only).

Extension to auto-complete search terms that you enter in the Firefox Search bar. This is Google Suggest feature actually. There is already a open source Firefox extension which provides this feature.