Google has pulled the plug on its oldest product, except for the search engine: Google Toolbar. This Internet Explorer toolbar is no longer available after 20 years of service. The Toolbar still referred to Google+ in its last years.
The End of Google Toolbar
When was the last time you used a toolbar in your browser other than the bookmarks bar? Most come with redundant functions and are only made to collect as much data from the user as possible. Google Toolbar was just about the most useful toolbar imaginable 20 years ago, but the tool has recently been discontinued.
In the early days of the Internet, Google Toolbar was a glory. It was an extra feature that you could link to Internet Explorer, the most popular browser for PCs at the time. Toolbar made it possible to immediately start a search and that was a function that was not yet part of the address bar by default. In addition, it also included a translation function, a pop-up blocker – also not standard at the time – and spell check. All functions of Google Toolbar are integrated in modern browsers today.
Google+
It was arse technician who happened to discover that Google Toolbar no longer exists. The news site was just about to run an article celebrating the service’s 21st anniversary, when Toolbar was no longer available just prior to publication. Not that the service had a long life ahead of it, because Microsoft will also stop Internet Explorer in the middle of 2022.
Google Toolbar was also not in its best shape, to say the least, according to Ars technica. The tool still referred to Google+, one of Google’s early social networks. In addition, a range of error messages was displayed. It is striking that Google communicated very transparently about the data that Toolbar collected and you could also refuse to collect all this data without further consequences.
That is different today, and this year it emerged that Google has deliberately hidden deep in menus in recent years. Early this year, we noticed that Google’s internal “Don’t be evil” slogan no longer makes sense. Have you ever had Google Toolbar? Maybe there are still special toolbars that you use every day in your browser? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.
– Thanks for information from Androidworld. Source