218126 - Approach Google about creating an official toolbar

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Marketing :: General, task)

Description

[Rob Farnell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030827 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+ StumbleUpon/1.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030827 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+ StumbleUpon/1.8

http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ have made a great effort to port the functions that
the Google toolbar provides in IE, but it is important that we have an official
version from Google.  This would be a very powerful way to evangelise as many
webmasters are continually using IE because of special features such as page
rank.  Recognition from Google would also be a huge boost to the profile of Mozilla.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://toolbar.google.com
2. Look for Mozilla Google toolbar
3. No Mozilla toolbar to be found

Actual Results:  
Using IE for page rank and other features (the only time I use it apart from
Windowsupdate)

Expected Results:  
Request Google create a toolbar for the Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird browser
possibly as an XPI extension moving away from the original Active X.  
OR
Create a petition to see if there is a real demand for the Google Toolbar on
Mozilla.

Comment 1

[irongut]

Persuading Google to write a new toolbar from scratch may be difficult. How much
do they have to gain? It might be easier to get them to promote or join the
GoogleBar project.

Comment 2

[Andy Edmonds]

Google has been approached and the implications of the MPL license explained --
they can take it and run with it (add PageRank), or the googlebar.mozdev project
will happily grant a Google developer CVS access.

They also politely asked us to not use their logo, but did not comment on the
use of icons -- though we've since refined those almost beyond recognition.

In fact, aside from the recent nod to blogger in the toolbar 2.0, I believe the
googlebar exceeds google's in functionality by a long shot with the notable
exception of PageRank -- which Google claims proprietary control over.

I've been told by a high level google developer that a large number of Google
engineers, using linux machines, use the mozdev googlebar project.  

I'm guessing it's just a matter of banging a clue into somebody with budgetary
control.  All yours Bart.

Even if there is a "private" bug (ref in bug 226572), the googlebar team, cc's,
and voters would all likely appreciate this bug remaining intact and used for
status updates.

Comment 3

[chris hofmann]

this all sounds very positive to me...  
I haven't had the time to go through a detailed evaluation of the IE google bar
and the mozilla extension.  does anyone know if that exists? that data would be
handy to have posted somewhere.

 I know the mozilla extension is about 1/4 the size of the IE google toolbar.
more good data with a side by side comparison of features, ability to extend,
and update would be valuable...

Comment 4

[David Grant]

What is PageRank?  I don't use IE so I don't know.

Comment 5

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

PageRank is Google's "hyperlink reputation system" algorithm for scoring a page
based on how many other pages of high page-rank link to the page.

/be

Comment 6

[Rob Farnell]

I've been using the Google Pagerank extension for the past few months so the
need for an official toolbar has been lessened significantly.  You can find it
at: http://www.tapouillo.com/firefox_extension/

Comment 7

[Scott Gifford]

Google now has an official FireFox toolbar:

    http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/

I'm going to close this out; feel free to re-open if you disagree.