Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Where is the Google Toolbar Google ushers Web surfers into its labs. The search service expands its research and development effort by asking its users to try out experimental technologies. [CNET News.com] CNet mentions a "2nd page" of the labs site. It's not linked from labs.google.com but apparently contains: The second page features experimental add-ons to Google's toolbar... One feature called "browser control," sure to raise eyebrows about Google's ambitions and direction, lets people suppress advertising pop-up windows that appear when the browser attempts to leave a Web site. [A feature already appearing in Mozilla] Another experimental navigation feature, albeit with a more direct connection to search, helps Google toolbar users navigate through results with a "next" and "previous" button, eliminating the need to double back to the search results page. A third toolbar experiment is a "combined search" button, letting people search Google's image, newsgroup and general databases in combination. The combined search sounds particularly nifty. I was a bit disappointed when google cordoned off groups and images into separate searches, and further disappointed what the Google API doesn't provide groups functionality. Has anyone tried the API on labs.google? Update:AndyB points to toolbar.google.com/experimental. 7:10:25 PM    comment