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bluenose2Jul 23, 2011
I will still use Firefox regardless of Google.
haploJul 24, 2011
Me too, especially since I love my pimped Firefox: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2011/07/22/cleaner-user-interface-firefox.html especially the vertical tabs to the right.
johnnysoftwareJul 23, 2011
I thought Google de-supported the Firefox toolbar a long time ago, or was that just Google bookmarks addon for Firefox?
AnonanimalJul 23, 2011
I'm not surprised. Google has been on this path for several years. Their days of acting like some benevolent foundation are long gone.
I also don't think this spells doom for Firefox. It may lose more market share, but it will continue to be a viable alternative to people who want a modern browser that is customizable and addresses privacy concerns, areas where Chrome falls very short.
Don't forget that Opera is still going strong after all these years despite its static 1% market share, and still innovating and improving.
johnnysoftwareJul 23, 2011
Dude, you realize that when you use a formula attack like leading with a slur and then making dire imprecations about the subject, and closing with a pitch for a bottom rung competitor, that you sound like a total sock puppet, right?
Here's what the article said: Google is dropping a toolbar made for Firefox.
Here's the context: Google got a new leader a few weeks ago and he is winnowing out a bunch of weak, not heavily used products, speeding up the pace of something Google has always done. The Google toolbar for Firefox itself has only been around a half decade or so.
Here's what you said: "...this path for several years."
I mean someone who didn't know anything about the subject -- the toolbar, Google's ongoing review/retirement of less heavily used products/services, etc. -- would probably fall for what you said. I mean, you are certainly not contradicting yourself. What PR flack would?
But your statement makes no sense and totally fits a stock pattern of comments used on Digg over and over again only about Microsoft competitors for the past several years. It is so rigid a pattern, it looks like you input a company name and product into a program, and it spits out a depreciative comment about them.
If you were as good at thinking and knowledgeable as your formulaic comment makes you appear at first glance, you would have noted in passing that the usefulness of the toolbar was marginalized last year or early this year when Google introduced support for realtime incremental searing on its home page and in web browser search bars. [It's that fact that ultimately makes your negative comment totally baseless.]
But I don't think a formulaic program would be that nuanced unless somebody put some real effort into it, and they had some skill and gumption. Considering the apparent source, that hardly seems surprising.
Closed AccountJul 24, 2011
Holy f**king s**t. Look at you jumping to Google's defense? Are you REALLY that desperate for Sergey's c**k in your mouth that you perceive the first paragraph of Anonanimal's comment a slur? Really? A f**king SLUR?Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
linksusJul 24, 2011
Ahhh hahahahahaha , a gay joke.
johnnysoftwareJul 24, 2011
Toolbars are kind of dying off.
Thanks to high Internet speeds compared to the past, you can now quickly hit a portal home page and then bounce off that to the page you want by clicking a link.
Web search field is built into all web browsers now.
Toolbars like any addon written in JavaScript slightly slows down startup and operation of Firefox and I guess any web browser. So if you pretty much never click anything on it, you might as well uninstall it.
Toolsbars on IE are frequently linked with malware.
Thus, toolbars are a dying breed for a lot of reasons.
I think a web tech savvy company creating its own toolbar could make a lot of sense, as a way to speed up employee's productivity. But the general purpose uber portal toolbars seem to be going the way of the dodo.
haploJul 24, 2011
Three words: Slow down cowboy!
Anyway, toolbars dying off? I have currently 3 toolbars in Firefox. OK, to be fair, two came with the fox itself (and I've hidden a third one) but not so for the Web Developer toolbar. Moreover, portal websites are so '90s.
Anyway, I love it how you bitchslap one commenter and post something like this. Or in wikipedia speak: {{Citation needed}}
undervaluedJul 24, 2011
Love Firefox, but have been using Chrome for nearly a year now for one simple reason, it loads faster.
bestbuys4businessJul 24, 2011
I have to say I don't like the new search feature particularly and wondered where Google actually went, thanks for the insight. Isn't Firefox being used in greater numbers every day? The last poll I saw it was up to 41%. Not a very smart move by Google, I think.
Closed AccountJul 24, 2011
If you saw a poll that claimed 41% for Firefox, you saw a bulls**t poll. Like a single website's users.
bestbuys4businessJul 31, 2011
Actually I was looking at my site stats :)
andy9lJul 24, 2011
Firefox is *rapidly* losing market share to Chrome. "Not a very smart move by Google" ... they kinda run this town so I wouldn't worry yourself too much.
2223hutJul 24, 2011
google is so rich he can dump a fox like mozilla
johnnysoftwareJul 24, 2011
Totally crazy article and bizarre conclusion.
Personally, I haven't used 3rd party search/gadget toolbars in a really long time. Here is why:
1. For searching they are totally unnecessary. Every browser has a search field
2. All the browsers I search with default to Google, which gives me by far the best search results. So the main thing I used them for in the past, is now built into my browser.
3. Over time, I have used toolbar addons less and less for 5 reasons:
a) breakage for a while after I upgrade my browser,
b) gradual removal of service from the toolbar,
c) me losing interest and falling use frequency of them anyway,
d) toolbars as with all JavaScript based extensions slow down web browse loading and/or everything else,
e) Yahoo, ASK.com, and by implication of the latter, NYTimes toolbars are linked to Bing.com and that has annoying implications due to Microsoft's ad system, which has displayed malware right in pages before, and gives me privacy/censorship concerns, being linked to these services now. Uninstalling toolbars, in most cases, will make you safer from MS Bing related privacy/malware attacks.
Now, ZD has been heavily supported by Microsoft ads for a long time. So no one is completely surprised to see them not outright bite the hand that feeds them. But this article and ones like it make them seem like a boot-licking sycophant, vying for the affection of its master by besmirching as many competitors as it can with an article about one tiny, insignificant, outdated feature being dropped.
Consider the fact that Google and Mozilla worked together to hammer out the standard that lets all web browsers do incremental searches right in or next to the address bar using Google (the normal choice) or whatever search engine the user likes.
That hardly makes it seem like either company is "dumping" the other. It makes it seem like both companies are "doing" each other and everyone else in the industry, in a way that is admirably constructive and productive.
Articles like this just make ZD look bad. After a while, people will notice that the same kind of articles come from across the gamut of ZD publications and these came out of the blue, coincidentally at a time when Microsoft's former monopoly sized market share dropped. Browsers, phones, mobile computing, and OS articles -- that's where you see this garbage cropping up these days.
The art of writing technical articles seems to be fast disappearing, being replaced with the annoyance of what turn out to be sophmorishly-written ads that are just a waste of time.
At the rate you are going, ZD, you are going to find yourself whether getting zero page hits is going to be worth it, no matter what Microsoft pays you for page hits or favorable press. You once seemed highly professional and technically aware & astute. But now you just seem like non-journalistic social web-gaming hacks.
Closed AccountJul 24, 2011
Wow..you post absolutely bulls**t (except in the sad, pathetic fantasyland universe that you choose to live on) and then accuse ZD of taking payment from Microsoft for not backing up your complete bulls**t?
The saddest art is, I think you have been living your bulls**t lie of a life for so long that you honestly think it is real. You think that people DO car what you have to say on any topic and that all the s**t you make up is real. That is just going to make it harder and harder for you to ever be anything bu the social outcast that you are.
By the way, you f**king idiot....IE was the first browser to make the URL bar also a search bar.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
particleman420Jul 24, 2011
looks like someone struck out again on their saturday night and is taking it out on digg by attacking users, Again.
goofyextremeJul 25, 2011
Mozilla never was a good browser in my opinion, but I suppose there are many fans out there, including Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. Still, they were a little ahead of IE until IE8 or so. Then they lost. But in an earlier diggnation episode, Kevin and Alex pointed out that the founder of Mozilla Firefox just designed the browser because there hadn't been another IE release for about 5 or so years. The guy even said he would use it if they got better. He said he likes IE, but we'll see what Google thinks about it. Frankly, I don't really care.
tomondiggJul 25, 2011
Google's search engine has gotten too "add heavy" so I've switched to "Goodsearch" which also gives a penny to the charity of my choice each time I search.
johnnysoftwareJul 24, 2011
There is nothing stopping Mozilla or anyone else for writing a Google-services oriented toolbar for Firefox. Firefox has an open API that is well documented. Google web services also have well documented, open APIs.
Neither requires using some arcane, obscure, proprietary language. It is XML, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. No big deal.
The programming will have to be updated from time to time on an on-going basis. Web Services APIs are constantly updating, being replaced with v2 versions, and getting retied too.
You can hit the major Google services by clicking a link in the top part of most of Google's web pages. Likewise, when you are working with Google documents, the commands you use are right there at the top of the page.
Any experienced web user knows you can create your own personal home page and store it on your computer's hard disk or your work/home web server, and include links to all your most favorite web sites, services, pages, and searches. It is fast and the capability has been around since 1994 or earlier. That is where the term "home" page really comes from; it's your home one.
Dig it?
hesper007Jul 24, 2011
as a developer i would say firefox is awesome...
falcongamespotJul 24, 2011
This isn't cool... I really don't agree with the implied complete split with Mozilla as this article asks.
xpcyberJul 24, 2011
firefox have it's own follow ship and Google chrome have its own.... and these companies does't restrict users at any cost... user are happy to see this competitions and gain profit from this in terms of good features:)
haploJul 24, 2011
And other people are not sheep and just use whatever works best in a given situation. I use both Firefox and Chrome, often side by side. And now and then I (even) use Internet Explorer, and when I have fixed my Axim I will use Opera again.