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Yesterday I wrote at Search Engine Land, After Six Years, Google Drops Support For Toolbar On Firefox.
In my article, I stressed the fact that the Google Toolbar was first introduced for Firefox over six years ago. They have supported the browser for six plus years and with the introduction of Firefox 5, they have decided to no longer support the browser. Why? They said "many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser," so why make it redundant.
But then Danny came in and added that this is a "stunning" move by Google. Why? Danny exampled "Google uses the toolbar to track user behavior. It's one way that Google gets site speed data that in turn is used to influence its search results. Many suspect that that surfing behavior is also used," Danny added.
That is pretty crazy if you think of it. Obviously, Google knows this and made a decision not to support Firefox 5. Are they that confident Chrome will take it's place? Will they also not support the new version of Internet Explorer?
Do you want the Google Toolbar on Firefox 5? Alex Chitu explained you can still run it if you use the compatibility reporter add-on.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Comments:
jeffyablon
07/22/2011 12:52 pm
It IS stunning, and it's why Danny is Danny. As for the question about dropping IE support ... well, duh. The "features are already built in" line is pure propaganda; FF has too many users to drop off in this way unless the big G has decided that their strategy needs to shift away from "support everyone because it gets us information" to "we have the information, now we want control". I thought some more about this, nd I had to follow upelaborate on what I said before: Google dropping support for the Google Toolbar is a pretty clear sign of something that up until now I've steadfastly argued wasn't the case: GOOGLE IS A MONOPOLY: My point in detail is here: http://answerguy.com/2011/07/22/google-dominant-data-anti-trust-browser-monopoly/ JY
Webmaster
07/23/2011 05:10 am
It is sad, I have upgraded firefox 5 but can't install google toolbar. Do you think that I should downgrate to firefox 4? If I don't use google toolbar there may cause of losing pagerank? http://www.voyagevietnam.net
Lovekills_s
07/25/2011 04:53 am
Yep, I was astonished to see google toolbar not available with FireFox 5. But somehow, since I knew it was an upgrade from firefox 4 to firefox 5, the toolbar install is still available in Windows folder. So following some of the community discussions, I was able to make it work by going to : C:\Users\[your user name here]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[sometext].default and searching for the install.rdf file (windows 7 & Vista) Open the "install.rdf" file and then change the targetApplication max version value from 4.0.* to 5.0.* or even 6.* will work, so it's gonna support Firefox 6 in the time to come.. Worked well for me and was a minute's job for me..Got back my toolbar and thus, happy browsing :) Somehow, Google should be in Sync with the browser companies to support the toolbars with any latest launches/upgrades to the browsing system.. Or interpreting it the other way, is this the time for toolbar to lose its importance? nah! that's too much of -ve thinking !
Offroad Vietnam
08/30/2013 04:03 am
I think Firefox 5 was too old. I am using Firefox 23 now and it seems Firefox is releasing as regular as Google Chrome. Chrome uses too much system resources and Firefox is definitely better. I removed IE and haven't used for years. IE is too outdated. I recently employed 301 redirect for my company website (http://www.offroadvietnam.com) but no PR is transferred. Do you think I need to wait until next Google PR update?