Google Toolbar 5.0: Gadgets in your browser

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Google Toolbar 5.0: Gadgets in your browser

by Avatar	Stumble this!	December 14th 2007

I had wondered about when Google would do this move and it did not took long to see it executed, i am talking about when Google would allow gadgets to form part of the Google Toolbar given Yahoo and Microsoft recent advancements on their toolbars and a new Live Toolbar soon to land.

and seems that such shift is going to start right about now with the release of the beta of what is going to be the next gen in browser Toolbar, i know where to give credit where credit is due, and i do see that google new toolbar is without a doubt the most advanced solution to come from the big 3.

but that don´t means they figured it all out on by themselves, they take nods from both yahoo and Microsoft toolbars, they take from smaller start ups like maxthon and foxmarks along even a middle weight champ like Opera. they have taken the best ideas on their competitors and finally added them to this toolbar.

in the case that retains relevance to this blog i must talk about how they reach from the development of the new good desktop that took igoogle gadgets to the desktop and consolidated the form of the Google widget engine.

and since they have already developed a widget engine for their gadgets why not use it too in the toolbar?, seems like a obvious choice and it is, but that don´t makes it less important, opera has a widget engine built in the browser but unfortunately the opera community is light years away from the firefox community and given that opera don´t developed better their widget offerings, pretty much no one outside opera users know they have a widget engine to begin with compared to their competitors in that space.

Here you can see that the fact of gadgets running in the toolbar is the number one feature listed in the Google Toolbar 5.0 page.

Here you can see how a widget will run in a dropdown loader box.

it will be interesting to see how yahoo respond to google recent advancements, advancements that along the way things have changed in the widgetsphere threat their division to face defeat and even oblivion.

Google Toolbar 5