Google Toolbar resides above the browser's tab bar and provides a search box to carry out web searches. Users can log into their Gmail accounts and access their email, saved bookmarks, and web history. It has tools such as AutoLink, AutoFill, Translation, spell checker common to all browsers, while pop-up blocker and word finder are restricted to Internet Explorer. Google Toolbar is often distributed through product bundling with a primary download.
Sidewiki
was launched on September 23, 2009, allowing users to make comments, which are visible to the public, on any web page. Google uses ranking algorithms to determine comment relevancy and usefulness using criteria such as users voting up and down a comment and past contributions. Sidewiki is currently available for Internet Explorer and Firefox through Google Toolbar, the Google Chrome browser through an add-on, and for other browsers, like Safari, it is available as a bookmarklet. Web site owners cannot control Sidewiki comments, and there is currently no way for a web site to opt out of Sidewiki; however, Sidewiki is disabled on secure sites. In September 2011, Google announced that it would discontinue Sidewiki.
My Location
My Location is a geolocation service which uses the location of Wi-Fiaccess points to determine the toolbar user's location. This location is used to optimize search results based on where the user is located. Google Toolbar can also provide the geolocation data to third-party websites through the W3C Geolocation API.
AutoLink
Google Toolbar was criticized when the AutoLink feature was added to the toolbar because this new feature directed users to pre-selected commercial websites. For example, if it finds a book's ISBN on a webpage, it provides a link to Amazon's product page for the particular book. Google said that the feature "adds useful links" and "none of the companies which received AutoLinks had paid for the service."
Web caching
The desktop version of Google Toolbar shows the cached copy of any given search result, which was useful for slower Internet connections and benefitted by Google Web Accelerator until its discontinuation in 2008. This feature does not exist for the mobile version.
History
;Google Toolbar 1.0 New features:
Direct access to the Google search functionality from any web page
Web Site search
Automatic location of search terms on the web page with each word highlighted in its own color;
System Requirements: Firefox; Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux ;Google Toolbar 7.0 for Internet Explorer New features:
Toolbar Instant
Google+ notifications
System Requirements: Internet Explorer; Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7+
Privacy
Google Watch has raised concerns about Google Toolbar's possible threats to privacy, such as tracking of browsing patterns, automatic installation of updates without the user's knowledge, and a privacy policy that can be revised without notice. The toolbar does not track personally identifiable surfing activities of the end user unless advanced features such as PageRank are specifically enabled by the user. It does track "anonymous" statistics, which can reveal a lot of information when correlated with other data, although similar criticisms could be made of Google's online search engine.
Google Compute
Google Compute was a separately downloadable add-on for the Google Toolbar which utilized the user's computer to help the Folding@homedistributed computing project, which studies disease-relevant protein folding and other molecular dynamics. It was founded in March 2002 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Functionally, it downloaded a small packet of work, performed calculations on it, and uploaded it back to Stanford University. Although it was limited in functionality and scope, it increased Folding@home's participation from 10,000 up to about 30,000 active CPUs. The program ended in October 2005 in favor of the project's official clients, and is no longer available for the Toolbar.
