I came across this headline in Google Desktop’s RSS aggregator, Web Clips:

Official Google Blog: New, improved, and out of beta

I didn’t know what the article was about from the headline, but it sounded interesting and I double clicked on it. Turns out it’s about the latest version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

Here’s the deal: When I started installing toolbars like Yahoo’s and Google’s in Firefox, I wanted to (or at least wondered if I could) squish two toolbars into one row (like you can do in Internet Explorer). Well, you can’t. But with the latest (and first out of beta) release of Google Toolbar, you can’t actually move the Google Toolbar up to share a line with the navigation toolbar, but you can drag every single element — including the Google logo — to any other toolbar. It’s almost ridiculous the degree of customization this grants the user.

The ability to add, subtract, and rearrange screen elements in the Toolbar conjures thoughts of the Google Sidebar. Sidebar is so great that Google should really make it available separate from Google Desktop Search.

The other new feature in Google Toolbar for Firefox is Google Suggest. It’s neat but not earth shattering. However, I think it’s telling that both of these new features are Firefox only. Between Sidebar and an apparent focus on Firefox, this begs the question: Will Google release its own (Firefox-based) browser? Personally I can’t see Google relying on another company’s technology. If Google sees something it likes, it buys it.

Would Google acquire Mozilla and close Firefox’s source code?

I’ve known about RSS for several years now, but I’ve never really been excited about it. Before now. I knew that you need some kind of aggregator to really take advantage of RSS. Firefox will aggregate RSS feeds into the sidebar. My Yahoo allows users to add RSS feeds as sections to the personal homepage. I tried these technologies, but they never seemed useful to me because, of the ten or twenty web sites I check regularly, I like browsing their pages. So I never took advantage of RSS.

But now I’ve got Google Desktop 2. It includes an RSS aggregator, which it calls Web Clips. It automatically adds RSS feeds from websites you browse. This is good and bad, but it’s so easy to add or subtract feeds, I leave the option turned on.

I knew this was good when I noticed Sports Illustrated articles in the RSS feed. See, ESPN.com is for all intents an purposes my exclusive sports source on the web. But CNN.com is my primary news source. Because Sports Illustrated and CNN are affiliated, big sports stories from SI are often linked to on the CNN.com homepage. So at some point in there I clicked on an SI link. Google Desktop added SI’s RSS feed. An SI article showed up in the Web Clips plugin.

The epiphany wasn’t that I had easier access to another outlet. The epiphany was that I could still visit my favorite sites just like I always did, but easily get updates from sites that I might not visit on a regular basis. I can still enjoy the sites I’ve always enjoyed, and now I get effortless access to the best of sites that I might not otherwise enjoy as much.

I just formatted my hard drive, and the first applications I installed were, in order:

1. Norton Antivirus
2. Firefox
3. AOL Instant Messenger
4. Google Desktop

And that’s it so far. I declined this time to install the Yahoo toolbar in Firefox, but after about a minute of thought I went ahead and installed the Google toolbar again. I am a little torn because now with Toolbar and Desktop, I have two Google search boxes on my screen basically all the time, which is repetitive. But I would keep the Toolbar just for the spellchecker.

When it came to a homepage, I did away with Google Customized … Desktop makes it unnecessary.

Currently, my home “page” is CNN.com, ESPN.com, PvPonline.com, and Gamespot.com. I kind of feel like Wikipedia should be in there, though …

The other day I went to Wikipedia.org and the site was down. The error page was very complete, however, and included a link to Alexa.com (which Amazon.com owns, by the way), a site that ranks websites by — among other things — daily page views. The link, which I’ve duplicated here, shows a graph of “Reach” of Wikipedia.org compared to Slashdot.org. I assume reach means unique viewers, as opposed to page views. Also, the graph I link to here spans the maximum available two years, rather than the one year Wikipedia’s error page linked to.

The graph is surprising. Why has Wikipedia experienced a mammoth increase in traffic since October 1, 2004? It’s currently the 40th most visited site on the Internet (scroll down the page I linked to). Slashdot is right around 800. In the span of one year Wikipedia has gone from 800-class to 40-class. How? Why?

I know that over the last six months or so I’ve grown more interested in Wikipedia. I posted about it. Has it made some sweeping improvement? Has word of mouth built it up? Or has its content reached critical mass? Maybe it’s gotten so large and so deep that it’s just too powerful to ignore. Maybe it’s gotten so useful that people use it once and they’re hooked. Is that what happened to Google? Probably.

Yes, I finally switched to Gmail.

You know what really bugs me about Yahoo Mail? I have to re-enter my password multiple times per day. Not only that, but there’s one screen that tells me I need to log back in, then another screen where I actually type in my password. Why don’t they just consolidate this to one screen? This alone was nearly enough to make we switch.

Google Desktop 2 was enough to put Gmail over the top.

Via email correspondence, Lewis commented that
1. The Gmail plugin should update more quickly, because he has deleted messages but they are still visible in the Deskbar hours later, and
2. Filters created by the user in the native Gmail interface should be applied to Gmail messages displayed in the Deskbar interface, rather than requiring the user to create seemingly duplicate filters.

I’m inclined to agree with him on both points.

I see a correlating deficiency on the Quick View plugin — With the clickable star system, it effectively becomes a Favorites/Bookmarks list. Available on the Google Personal (google.com/ig) site, users can create a bookmarks list. This again seems to be a case where users must duplicate effort to gain similar functionality across a single company’s product line.

Perhaps Google is getting too big for its britches.

So I have two draft posts about Google: “Google is Taking Over the World,” and “Google: Free ISP.” I never posted either of them because I thought they were both too out there.

Well la-dee-da, today I read on my Google Desktop 2 Deskbar a summary of this story from Cnet News.com: Google offers clues to its own Wi-Fi service. Very little is known about it, but it doesn’t sound like it will be free. But why not? Google bought out Keyhole, and now it’s the free Google Maps (which is sooooo much better on broadband, by the way). If Google were going to roll out any kind of ISP, wouldn’t it be Wi-Fi? There’s still a lot of tussle and bussle at the FCC about who gets to use what infrastructure when offering phone, tv, and Internet to consumers. Verizon now offers a wireless broadband service. Google would need to invest in some kind of infrastructure, but they wouldn’t need 100% coverage immediately. Verizon’s new service reaches 130 or 140 million people, depending on which sentence in the fine print you read. Google could put up some transmitters in San Francisco, DC, NYC, LA … whatever, and roll it out. Then add more as they go along. Or they could lease infrastructure from existing companies.

But hey — they could also buy AOL. How about RaodRunner, too? There are rumors that Microsoft wants to merge MSN with AOL, but Google doesn’t want to lose all its AOL business. So the new rumor is that Google might pre-emptively buy AOL to keep it out of Microsoft’s sandbox. Fun, huh?

This is really looking like the old Microsoft-vs-Netscape days, except that Google is entrenched in multiple markets, and Microsoft has no option comprable to throwing money at popular companies so they will produce IE-only websites. Google’s partner is the consumer — and the advertiser.

Because I moved to Atlanta, I changed my cell phone number, which I won’t post here. I also decided that now would be a good time to change me email address. I will still check the Yahoo address for the forseeable future, but from now on, please email me at logicbus at gmail dot com.