Webware

Updated July 2 at 10:30 a.m. PDT: The full list of supported languages has been added to the bottom of the story.

Toolbars have long been an effective way for software publishers to add several features to a browser at once, and the Google Toolbar has long been among the most popular of these. Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer introduces revamped translation tools, giving users one-click powers of conversion over many languages.

Google Toolbar for IE now offers one-click page translation.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The toolbar now detects your default language setting and using the Translate button will attempt to convert the page to it. Clicking a link will automatically translate the new page, as long as its part of the same domain as the original. Forty-one languages are supported so far, from Spanish, French, Italian, and German to Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi, Ukranian, and Vietnamese.

Not all words on a page will be translated, but from my tests that seems limited only to text that's been embedded in logos and other art. If you need a lot of on-the-fly translation, this could be a major time saver. The feature has not been extended to Google Toolbar for Firefox, although Google said on its blog post announcing the feature that it hopes to implement it soon.

The new feature supports Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Neat, but you need a toolbar and IE to try it.

(Credit: Google)

It will only work on Internet Explorer, and only in the U.S. right now, but if you're looking to extend the same timesaving search convenience of Google's mobile apps to your desktop, the new Google Toolbar (download) from Google Labs will do it.

The My Location feature found in Google Maps for Mobile--and recently integrated into Google Mobile App--uses cell tower triangulation or GPS to find your approximate or exact location. That localizes your search terms, so queries for "weather" or "coffee" pull up results close to you, and save you from typing those extra five digits every time you search for something nearby. Likewise, the My Location feature on the desktop uses information from nearby wireless hot spots to point you out.

I'm no fan of toolbars, believe me (well, maybe RoboForm) and I don't regularly use IE as my go-to browser, but for Google's My Location would the sacrifice be worth it? Truth be told, no, not for me at this point, but I might be tempted to try the souped-up toolbar were it to come out as a Firefox add-on down the road, or maybe switch to Chrome for a while if that were a built-in feature, not a toolbar.

How about you? Is having Google's search gods know where to route your queries a compelling enough feature to warrant downloading a toolbar--yes or no? And does privacy matter? Keep in mind that in using this Labs toolbar, you'll be sharing information with Google.

Google on Thursday introduced Toolbar Labs, a mechanism to let users of the browser add-on try experimental new features--including the first two, a locator service and support for simplified Chinese.

Google is offering an experimental Simplified Chinese toolbar.

(Credit: Google)

The move is the newest demonstration--and the second in a week after the relaunch of Google Labs--of the company's beta-testing philosophy. The company uses labs experiments to launch products rapidly even if they're still half-baked, to get early feedback on products it needs to steer in the right direction, and to draw attention to its technology.

"A few things to keep in mind as you check out Toolbar Labs: It's a forum to test out new ideas, so some of these ideas will make it into the standard Toolbar, but others may not. Also, labs versions are not as well-tested as beta versions, so they may be slightly more unstable," toolbar team members Aseem Sood and Susan Taing said in a blog post Thursday.

The new toolbars must be downloaded and installed, and currently only work with Internet Explorer. Although toolbars take up valuable screen real estate, they're important as a way for companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google to drive traffic to their search engines and encourage use of other online services.

It's too bad for experimentalists that the labs version of the Google toolbars aren't some option available through existing instances of the Google Toolbar, which would make it easier to test new technology. Gmail Labs, introduced in 2008, has the virtue of this easy testing.

The first experiment, Toolbar with My Location (download), determines your location based on wireless network signals and can feed that information into Google Maps, for example.

The second, the Google Simplified Chinese Toolbar, is tailored to use the small slice of real estate more effectively for the language and has built-in translation features.

Correction:This post initially misstated where sponsored results show up. Sponsored results show up in toolbar searches and Google.com searches only.

Google on Tuesday released a new version if its software toolbar for Internet Explorer. Included is a feature carried over from the company's desktop search product--a search box that runs whether or not you have your browser open. This special box sits next to the Start button on your taskbar, and lets you search the Web, your browser bookmarks, and any files and applications you have on your PC.

In a blog post, the company said this release is an attempt to put the focus back on search. More importantly, it's getting people to start a Google search whether or not they've got their browser open--giving the company more chances to serve up ads. Part of that is already apparent, as users get sponsored results through toolbar searches, just like they would when searching from Google.com.

The new quick search option puts a search box on your taskbar.

(Credit: Google )

Other new features include the recently visited pages and bookmarks start page that first shipped with Chrome, then came to Firefox with its latest Google toolbar release. Google has also added its synchronization service, which will let you access your same Google bookmarks and autofill form information from multiple computers.

Users already running Google's desktop search program can turn off the quick search box, or use it as a replacement. Google has posted instructions for doing that here.

If you've used a computer in the last decade, no doubt you've come face to face with the Google Toolbar. A Dell computer I bought a few years back came with both the toolbar and Google's desktop search program pre-installed. Also, an obscene amount of software comes with it as an optional add-on in the installation process since Google pays referrers a fat $1 per new user.

Next month, Google's toolbar turn eight years old and to celebrate, the company has launched a brand-new version for Internet Explorer, which brings it up to speed with last month's beta release for Firefox users.

Of all of the features, my personal favorite is the updated autofill system. This lets you have separate autofill profiles, which can be changed on the fly. This is useful if you're planning to use the toolbar at work, since you can keep one set of information for personal use (e.g. usernames, addresses, phone numbers), and another for business. It can also follow you from browser to browser as long as you're logged in with your Google credentials.

Other big changes include the introduction of gadgets, which users can affix to the top of their browser and summon with a click. It also throws in Web bookmark sync, and the updated sharing button, which lets you send entire pages to friends via SMS or without having to use an e-mail account.

Google's put together a pretty neat shot of how the toolbar has progressed since its introduction, which I've pasted below.

As the years have gone by Google has relied less on words as much as more recognizable icons. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: Google Inc.)

First it was the Google Toolbar, then it was an integrated search box in the corner of my browser. It's no secret Google's been slowly attempting to take control of our computers for years. The desktop search is a testament to that. What's really creepy is the new Web History tracking service Google quietly rolled out last week. This new service doesn't go after items on your computer, rather what you're looking at online.

Google Web History archives everything you've searched for (while signed in to your Google account), and gives you a bookmarklet to bookmark sites you like. The whole idea is to make the browsing experience something you can search through and access from any computer, anywhere. Search history has items listed by time of search, with the most recent ones on a front page.

Results show up by day. To bookmark any item, you can just 'star' it.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Searches are broken down by Google category like Web, Images, Maps, and (the now misnamed) Froogle. Users can also see how many searches they've done by month, day, and hour. Drilling down deeper, you can also go in and click on the number of searches and see the top sites and results. It's a total analytic overload.

The real creepy part in all this is the integration you get if you have the Google Toolbar installed on your browser. This will track every single site you're visiting, and apply the same aforementioned analytics so you can keep track of which sites or services you're using the most. Sure, we've had browsing history for years, but it's always been localized. It's a little alarming to see it online, regardless of the fact it can't be shared with others.

The good news is that users can opt-out of Google's Web History program, along with the capability to delete any item that's been archived. The bad news is that if you have a Google account, all your search activity has been tracked since last week.

For more shots of the service, keep reading.