Official Google Blog: New, improved, and out of beta

I didn’t know what the article was about from the headline, but it sounded interesting and I double clicked on it. Turns out it’s about the latest version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

Here’s the deal: When I started installing toolbars like Yahoo’s and Google’s in Firefox, I wanted to (or at least wondered if I could) squish two toolbars into one row (like you can do in Internet Explorer). Well, you can’t. But with the latest (and first out of beta) release of Google Toolbar, you can’t actually move the Google Toolbar up to share a line with the navigation toolbar, but you can drag every single element — including the Google logo — to any other toolbar. It’s almost ridiculous the degree of customization this grants the user.

The ability to add, subtract, and rearrange screen elements in the Toolbar conjures thoughts of the Google Sidebar. Sidebar is so great that Google should really make it available separate from Google Desktop Search.

The other new feature in Google Toolbar for Firefox is Google Suggest. It’s neat but not earth shattering. However, I think it’s telling that both of these new features are Firefox only. Between Sidebar and an apparent focus on Firefox, this begs the question: Will Google release its own (Firefox-based) browser? Personally I can’t see Google relying on another company’s technology. If Google sees something it likes, it buys it.

Would Google acquire Mozilla and close Firefox’s source code?

But now I’ve got Google Desktop 2. It includes an RSS aggregator, which it calls Web Clips. It automatically adds RSS feeds from websites you browse. This is good and bad, but it’s so easy to add or subtract feeds, I leave the option turned on.

I knew this was good when I noticed Sports Illustrated articles in the RSS feed. See, ESPN.com is for all intents an purposes my exclusive sports source on the web. But CNN.com is my primary news source. Because Sports Illustrated and CNN are affiliated, big sports stories from SI are often linked to on the CNN.com homepage. So at some point in there I clicked on an SI link. Google Desktop added SI’s RSS feed. An SI article showed up in the Web Clips plugin.

The epiphany wasn’t that I had easier access to another outlet. The epiphany was that I could still visit my favorite sites just like I always did, but easily get updates from sites that I might not visit on a regular basis. I can still enjoy the sites I’ve always enjoyed, and now I get effortless access to the best of sites that I might not otherwise enjoy as much.