I love the Google toolbar – and yes I’d marry it if I could. Credit Card Autofill is the greatest creation since penicillin, and makes it incredibly easy for me to rack up hundreds of dollars worth of useless crap on eBay. Like the old joke goes, maybe I didn’t really need the entire first season of Mama’s Family on VHS. Regardless, as you may guess, I’m like a kid on Christmas morning when an update is announced. The current new additions include:
- On-the-fly query suggestions.
- Online bookmarks.
- Web page sharing via email, SMS or Blogger.
The coolest new feature by far, however, is the gallery of custom buttons that has been added. They currently include Slashdot, the New York Times, CNET and others – but I imagine the community will start to suggest, or even create, a slew of new ones. My first installs were Dictionary.com and a Weather checker. Site owners will have the ability to create their own buttons and add them to the gallery should they be approved. More good things from Google, and you can install the beta right now by clicking here.
The offical tag line for the Google Toolbar shoud be: “Got spy ware?” Because if you don’t, you’ll soon get some once you load up that “helpful” utility. It’s a naughty one that one.
I dunno. You can disable a lot of the features that you don’t want. I use it religiously.
Ok, I just Googled the Google Toolbar (oh the irony!) and according to a lot of reports it doesn’t classify as “spyware” in the traditional sense. However, the toolbar does collect information on what you have Googled and which pages you visit all in the name of “making the Google experience better” which in my mind is still spyware. But there is an option to turn off this information gathering functionality and opt out of “making Google better.” Oh, Big Brother, where for art thou?