Google Toolbar

[LoudMusic]

I was using someone else's computer today and they had the Google Toolbar installed. Does anyone here use it? What are your thoughts? I'm sure you can list a whole bunch of possitive things about it, but what about negative? Is there anything really bad about it that you've noticed? Like your connection appears to be slower because it's talking to Google all the time ... or it gets in the way more than it helps ... or it's actually kinda clunky and isn't very effective anyway ... or you just load the Google website instead ... stuff like that.

 

[Klostrophobic]

I've been using it for a several months. It saves me from going to google.com to search for something and as of right now it has blocked 1244 popups. It doesn't rob me of bandwidth that I know of, and it doesn't take up all that much space. I love it.

I think the most useful feature is the word highliter. It highlights words that you have searched for. Very useful if you're looking for something in a huge list.

 

[Spock]

Beans I Say! meh, its ok for IE, but since ive switched over to Mozilla Fire Bird/Fox which has a built in Pop-Up Blocker And Dont Use IE that much, i Say Beans!

 

[Super-Supra]

I'm using Firefox now.

 

[Race Idiot]

Originally posted by spock
Beans I Say! meh, its ok for IE, but since ive switched over to Mozilla Fire Bird/Fox which has a built in Pop-Up Blocker And Dont Use IE that much, i Say Beans!

It also has it's own separate google search bar. Although google is becoming less useful day by day.

 

[LoudMusic]

Originally posted by Race Idiot
It also has it's own separate google search bar. Although google is becoming less useful day by day.

How so? Seems pretty great to me. Do you have an alternative suggestion?

 

[emad]

I'd give it a shot but considering that my laptop is down to the last gig of drive space and is VERY heavily fragmented (23 gigs of music) so I don't have very much to work with here . I might try it on my desktop later though.

 

[Slick6]

Originally posted by spock
Beans I Say! meh, its ok for IE, but since ive switched over to Mozilla Fire Bird/Fox which has a built in Pop-Up Blocker And Dont Use IE that much, i Say Beans!

What he said, but I still have it on my IE, when I was still using that, I used it all the the time. It doesn't take up much space and doesn't slow my stuff down.

 

[Race Idiot]

Originally posted by LoudMusic
How so? Seems pretty great to me. Do you have an alternative suggestion?

There have been a few incidents that have taken me to 5 whole pages of basically the same page, with various keywords and a load of other bs on the page. Mostly google comes up with what's required, but this seems to be more and more frequent.

I was reading an article on a site. I was pretty sure it was Maddox., but I couldn't find it.

 

[ving]

been using it for ages. i like it, but wish it was a google.com.au search.

 

[xAkirax2004]

Don't use it. Have used it before. Then I got Norton pop-up blocker.

 

[Acidman]

I've been using it for awhile now. I have found little to nothing wrong with it. 632 Pop-ups blocked so far. 👍

Also, ving you can change the Toolbar to use google.com.au as it's default page. Just change it to that in the options.

 

[LoudMusic]

Originally posted by Acidman
I've been using it for awhile now. I have found little to nothing wrong with it. 632 Pop-ups blocked so far. 👍

Also, ving you can change the Toolbar to use google.com.au as it's default page. Just change it to that in the options.

Yes, and there is a way to refine searches to certain domains. I'm sure you could have it search only the .au top level domain.

 

[Burnout]

I used it when I was into IE. I use FireFox now, which has a built in popup blocker and google search. I still have it on IE, doesn't slow it down in any ways, be it opening or just browsing a web page. The popup blocker is nice, and it leaves room for favorites in the bar, which is nice. I don't think IE would be near as good without it, although it's no FireFox...

 

[ving]

hey sweet... been a while since i have actually looked at the options. thnx

 

[vat_man]

You and your third options...

I have it on the work and home PCs. I use it a lot - it's particularly handy now that the drop down menu links to the Advanced Search and Images Search functions.

I've not seen any difference in speed - I doubt it speaks to Google all the time.

 

[Pako]

No negative stuff....use it now!

 

[toyomatt84]

I'd have to say that Altavista's toolbar is much more effective. I've used both and Altavista is atleast 10 to 20 steps ahead of google. It also has a nice Babelfish translator built in.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I use it. As a web developer I find the PageRank useful, as I can see how pages are built that cause Google to rank them higher. Also, I actually WANT Google to track my usage, since they send the spiders to pages that get they get information about that they haven't indexed in a while. I normally find that once I've finished developing a page, it's been indexed.

Does mean you have to be very careful with your robots though.

On the whole, I find it useful and unobtrusive. It's staying.

 

[LoudMusic]

Originally posted by toyomatt84
I'd have to say that Altavista's toolbar is much more effective. I've used both and Altavista is atleast 10 to 20 steps ahead of google. It also has a nice Babelfish translator built in.

This is a good point. Are there any other toolbars that are better or serve different purposes that you guys use?

 

[Mark T]

Never really thought about using the GoogleBar until this thread was made. I downloaded it and I have to say it is really good. The pop up blocker works better than my stand alone software.