Simon’s Blog

So, Sun and Google have partnered to distribute the Google Toolbar. You will have an option to install the Google Toolbar into your browser, whenever you download Java. Why are they doing this?

I’m not sure - there might be many good reasons. And I agree, there is value in volume; and value everywhere the network touches. But I don’t know what the value is here; largely, I suspect, because I don’t see any value in the Google Toolbar.

Just to see if things had changed since I last tried it, I installed the Google Toolbar this morning. It stayed installed for all of five minutes before I decided it was a waste of screen real estate.

Now, having said all that, I can completely understand a company having a desire to embed network services in a core part of the GUI of a web-browser (the most widely used application on the planet). In principle, there’s a whole lot of value in that. But, to my mind, the Google Toolbar misses the first hurdle any piece of software needs to jump, if users are to accept it. That is, software has to provde a net benefit to the user. And this piece of software simply doesn’t do that. In fact, it’s a clear net negative because it takes up valuable screen real estate whilst simultaneously (IMHO) providing little, if any, useful functionality.