Google's Firefox Toolbar

I’ve been using the open source Googlebar on Firefox for as long as it’s been out, and I have to say that I love it. But, when I heard that Google was releasing their own toolbar for Firefox, I decided I would give it a shot.

Google’s own version kinda sucks.

For one, Googlebar looks nicer. The icons are easier to discern and understand. Another nice thing, is that when I would enter a search term, I could click my mouse wheel (middle button) on one of the icons (normal google search, google groups search etc.) and it would open a new tab with my search results. Middle-click doesn’t work on the Google version.

Googlebar seems to work with my current theme much better too, and it has a myriad of options whereas the Google toolbar itself is relatively lacking. In fact, I can’t even turn off the Search button next to the input field. No need for me to see it, but that’s one button that doesn’t seem to be configurable.

So while undoubtedly this thing will get better, Google should have just hired the guys that did Googlebar. They’ve already done it better.