January 30, 2006

Bookmarks integrated into Google Toolbar

Michael Arrington

42 comments »

Google added bookmarks to version 4 of its Internet Explorer Toolbar (note that this is not available for their Firefox Toolbar). Google Bookmarks have been available since October on the Google site, but were not integrated into the toolbar until now.

Bookmarking is done via a popup from the toolbar that allows naming of the bookmark and any number of tags. A bookmark can be edited as well.

Google Bookmarks have no “social” or sharing feature. And while it is disappointing that bookmarks are not available yet for Firefox, I will say that the interface in IE is excellent. In addition to setting tags, users can access bookmarks directly from the toolbar via a drop down menu containing chosen tags.

I’ve been very hard on Google products recently (and their product strategy). And while I could criticize them for releasing this only in IE, I won’t. This is a great bookmarking product, interesting features can be added down the road, and many users will find it useful.

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Comments

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  1. Andreas

    Very great! I love it - it would be interesting to know if google store all those tags on their servers :) If yes, they will soon have a huge tag/url database!

  2. Carolus Holman

    I really liked Toolbars when they first came out a few years ago. Now I can’t stand them. Google, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast…to many! I think they may have a quality product, but is it neccessary? The thing I really am hating lately is the sneaky negative check off on the Yahoo toolbar when downloading anything Flash or Shockwave related, such a PITA.

  3. Mike

    I am not sure how this is better from what del.icio.us or http://www.blinklist.com already offer. Ok, I see one benefit, you have the bookmarks right in the toolbar and don’t have to visit any site to get to them. That is nice, but I am not sure that is enough.

    Then again, with their distribution, they might quickly gain lots of user adoption. It sure beats the favorites that people used to keep in a browser and helps them collect a lot more valuable information.

  4. Michael Arrington

    Mike, I agree. The existing bookmarking services (you left out a bunch, including Shadows, as well as Simpy and Raw Sugar which I’ve recently written about) have more functionality than what Google has put out there, particularly in terms of social features. However, I really like the ability to go to bookmarks directly from the toolbar via the drop down. This would be a nice feature add for existing services, too.

  5. orli

    Wow!
    It’s good that Google improved their ToolBar,this is a very useful services.
    My first Bookmark is.. TechCrunch :)
    Great!!

  6. Stephen

    As a tech/geek person the social features in del.icio.us are the most significant reason for my moving bookmarks to the site. The collective knowledge of the other people that are sharing my bookmarks outweighs anything else out there at present with the ‘suggested’ tags for sites that I post I can see exactly what others are tagging the same site with and these are basically my working peers giving us a working space that is common to us all.

    Attensa is my Outlook RSS reader and the toolbar they have for IE is pretty good even just for the del.icio.us integration. They still need to look at the tagging aspect with the toolbar as it doesn’t automatically show the ‘suggested’ and ‘popular’ tags from del.icio.us if you bookmark a site with the toolbar plug-in.

    The great part is the context tag browsing from the drop down of the toolbar for quickly getting to your bookmarks from del.icio.us.

    A quick screenshot is here

  7. Bill

    Ok, I’m a little slow. Why is this different than “favorites” on the IE pulldown menu?

  8. EnergyGuru

    One other great feature that delicious, shadows, yahoo my web have over the google toolbar or favorites is that you can access them from any computer. That’s great if you don’t bring a laptop from home to work, or if travelling without your laptop. It’s become very freeing to be able to access all my bookmarks from remote locations.

  9. Alex

    Hasn’t the Yahoo! toolbar had bookmark fuctionality like this since the 90’s?

  10. saokar

    yahoo toolbar had bookmarking feature for so long and it works great. no tagging however.

    why is that anything trivial google does get’s so much press?

  11. Chris Messina

    I’m wondering if when this migrates into IE7, whether the tags (I mean labels) you create for your Google bookmarks will be able to be leveraged by tag-enabled Vista?

    I wonder if, for example, you use Google Desktop, you get access to your bookmark labels but if you use the MSN Toolbar or Windows Desktop Search, you won’t.

    And yeah, when’s Google going to get the whole sharing thing? Isn’t that basic by now?

  12. Erik Schwartz

    Hasn’t the Yahoo! toolbar had bookmark fuctionality like this since the 90’s?

    Yes.

    http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release379.html

  13. Rob Sanheim

    I don’t understand why anyone would use one of these toolbars over delicious, at least until one of them integrates seamlessly with delicious and all the stuff it provides.

  14. Anirudh Garg

    I think they could have done a much better job at the bookmarks. It’s essentially web -100.0. How can this be a neat “new” feature ? Amazon and Yahoo had this long long before.
    In contrast, Yahoo Web 2.0 allows for storing bookmarks with the original page content ( so you have access to the page content even if it is offline now ), has social bookmarking, tag clouds and more.

  15. pacificdave

    very neat. the bookmarks feature is outstanding. it’s about time Google. i doubt Google will ever be into the whole social bookmarking thing that everyone wants. they know they can’t compete with del.icio.us so they’re going to leave it alone. all they probably want to do is add a little more functionality to their history/ bookmarks Google account feature. i’ve used the Yahoo Toolbar for a while not too long ago and as time went by i started hating it because one…. it was freakin’ ugly. the bookmarks feature sucked and anytime i accessed any of Yahoo’s content pages i’m overwhelmed with gigantic banner ads. Google’s Search History has a clean interface with no ads and some really cool history tools.

  16. Sean FitzGerald

    I can achieve pretty much the same result in Firefox with Foxylicious - http://dietrich.ganx4.com/foxylicious/ - an extension that synchronises my FF bookmarks with my del.icio.us account.

    This way I have the best of both worlds - I can still view my bookmarks when I’m on the road, I can take still take advantages of the social bookmarking aspect of del.icio.us and I can just grab one of my bookmarks from my FF bookmarks, if that’s all I want to do.

  17. Jayson

    It’s a pity Google Bookmarks can’t be community shared. This is perfectly solved by Del.icio.us but Quintura’s approach impresses me most with its features to manage a tagcloud, get relevant search results and bookmark best websites. I can’t wait to share my search scopes with the Quintura community.

  18. Oliver Tse

    One great feature would be to import your favorites into the Google bookmarks.

    At least for now, they are identical to Favorites in IE. So, if you were using one, there would be no need to use the other.

    Looking forward to their Firefox implementation.

    Oliver

  19. Stephen

    This article via tech.memeorandum has some interesting aspects on what the toolbar will do for Cost-Per-Click and better quality display ad’s for users of the toolbar.

    seobook.com

  20. Samie Griffis

    I have a GCSU facebook. My real name is samantha griffis. My college email is samantha_griffis@ecats.gcsu.edu. I go by Samie Griffis. I want to change my name on Facebook from Samantha to Samie. None of my friends know my by Samantha. And it will not approve my name. Why not?

  21. anonymous

    Toolbar again. I just enjolyed that I don’t need to install anything, download or configure. The services that are out there like Rawsugar simpy and others do a great job and let me search the links other people have saved as their favorites. What better way to learn about something new then from people who ahve already search and tried them.

  22. irnis

    Another new feature of Google Toolbar v4 is Custom Buttons. It allows to easily add your favorite social bookmarks to Google Toolbar.

    The custom button for Del.icio.us is already exist in the buttons gallery.

    Custom button for LookSmarts Furl (and also for Yahoo, MSN and Archive.org) is located here: http://www.irnis.net/soft/gtbb/

  23. Mehmet

    really liked Toolbars when they first came out a few years ago. Now I can’t stand them. Google, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast…to many! I think they may have a quality product, but is it neccessary? The thing I really am hating lately is the sneaky negative check off on the Yahoo toolbar when downloading anything Flash or Shockwave related, such a PITA.
    http://www.marmaraweb.com

  24. web tasarım

    One great feature would be to import your favorites into the Google bookmarks.

    At least for now, they are identical to Favorites in IE. So, if you were using one, there would be no need to use the other.

    Looking forward to their Firefox implementation.

    Oliver

    http://www.marmaraweb.com

  25. google bookmarks in firefox

    this can be done with two choice of firefox extensions

  26. Proton Dizayn

    I offer that software to my customers. Software has some bugs but it is enough in general. I hope better versions will be done soon.

  27. dincer

    Google Bookmarks have or sharing feature. The great part is the context tag browsing from the drop down of the toolbar for quickly getting to your bookmarks It’s good that improved their ToolBar,this is a very useful services.

  28. taner

    Very great! I love it

  29. pat

    Maybe I just don’t get it, but I sure wouldn’t rave about google’s bookmarks. Before I can even view my bookmarks, I have to sign in (even after already signing in for gmail). Then when I click bookmarks, I get a dropdown that only lists 44 of my bookmarks, then I must click/hold the down arrow at bottom while it s-l-o-w-l-y scrolls thru the rest (102 folders & 9 individual). A scroll bar would be so much easier! Due to these requirements, I just use the Favorites on the IE 7 toolbar (Star on L side of toolbar, not the old original “Favorites”). Is there something I’m missing?

  30. www.protondizayn.com

    i hope that will get better in new versions. Though, i like it..

  31. Dogan

    One great feature would be to import your favorites into the Google bookmarks.
    Very great!

  32. Aziz

    If social bookmarking is not the criteria then Google Bookmarks along with GMarks is perfect to manage and access your bookmarks from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser. GMarks displays Google bookmarks in the firefox sidebar and lets you search the content of bookmarked pages. You can also import firefox bookmarks into google and export google bookmarks to an html file using GMarks. GMarks has lot more other features. Read http://hashout.blogspot.com/20.....marks.html for a full review.

  33. Otis Gospodnetic

    For what is worth, GMarks is getting a younger cousin called Smarky. It does for Simpy what GMarks does for Google Bookmarks — it keeps your bookmarks and tags in Simpy in sync with your browser, it makes use of the Simpy REST API to provide full-text search right from the browser (no need to go to simpy.com to find a specific bookmark you want to get to), it has the smarts to turn tags into folder hierarchy, if you tell it to, and so on.