Googlebar

CNET Editors' note: The Download Now link will prompt a local download of the Firefox extension. To install the extension directly, open the file using your Firefox browser.

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on January 10, 2011

Until 2005, Google Toolbar was available only for Internet Explorer, leaving Firefox users--then a small minority--out in the cold. Googlebar was an attempt to fill that void, offering Firefox users a very similar toolbar that contained access to Google's search services and other features. Once Google released a version of Google Toolbar for Firefox, however, Googlebar lost its raison d'être. The last version of Googlebar was released in 2005; we presume that the developers saw no reason to continue with it once Google Toolbar became available. It's still not bad, especially for five-year-old technology, but Google Toolbar is better.

Googlebar installs easily and appears, like most toolbars, across the top of the browser beneath the bookmarks bar. To the left, a dropdown menu provides links to some of Google's most popular features, including Gmail, Google News, and Google Images. There's also a link to the Googebar's Options menu, which we appreciated; it's much easier to get to the Options menu that way than through Firefox's Add-ons menu. Googlebar makes it easy to search within Web sites and within Google Groups, and we liked that accessing all of Google's various types of searches was as easy as selecting an option from a dropdown menu. Googlebar also lets users highlight search terms within the search results, making it easier to see whether or not a search result is actually relevant. Unlike most browser add-ons, Googlebar actually has an online Help file that answers many common questions. Overall, Googlebar works just fine, but it doesn't contain nearly as many features and Google Toolbar.

Googlebar installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this add-on with reservations.

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Publisher's Description

From John Woods:

The Googlebar project was initially created to address the widespread desire in the Mozilla community for the Google toolbar to support the Netscape 7, Mozilla, and Firefox Web browsers. Allow users to easily access almost all of Google's specialty searches (some of which are not yet supported by the original Google toolbar) from one convenient toolbar.

What's new in this version: Version 0.9.20.5 adds support for firefox 4 and 5 as well as SeaMonkey 2.1 and 2.2