Google is one of the largest tech companies the world has ever seen. The company is also known for a variety of reasons.
And among the many reasons, is its number of products. Google is not shy in experimenting on new things, develop new projects, maintaining them if it sees fit, and killing them if it is necessary. Among the many products Google created, only a few are decades old, considering that Google was only founded in 1998, in which in 2021, it's only 23 years old.
And among the Google products considered ancient but was still running, was the Google Toolbar.
The toolbar that when installed on a browser, would show on the browser's tab bar to provide the Google experience.
This time in December of 2021, Google is killing the product.
Google Toolbar was Google's early foray into conducting its business through users' web browsers.
At that time, Internet Explorer conquered the web browser business, in a monopoly none could rival. And Google Toolbar here, was to piggyback on Internet Explorer's popularity, by introducing various plugins to promote Google products.
"Run a Google Search! (And maybe click on an ad.)," it once said.
Through the toolbar, users can experience Google, log into their Gmail accounts to access their emails, save bookmarks and also web history.
At that time, Internet Explorer could only handle web addresses in the address bar only. Google that knew this, made the toolbar to allow users to conduct a Google search from any page.
It was Google Toolbar that helped change consumer habits and made searching a popular activity when using web browsers.
It even enhanced Internet Explorer with pop-up blockers, spell checker, autofill, and Google translation.
What's more, the desktop version of Google Toolbar was able to show cached copy of any given search result, which was useful for users on slower internet connections. It was powered by Google Web Accelerator until its discontinuation in 2008.
But after developing and launching Google Chrome, everything the company did with Google Toolbar were abandoned.
"You're using Chrome, that's great. All of the features of Google Toolbar are already built into your browser," said Google on Google Toolbar download page, before Google killed it.
The web browser toolbar was originally meant for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5, released in 2000, to then support Mozilla Firefox until 2011.
Its last stable version was released on November 21, 2016 for Internet Explorer.
What this means, Google Toolbar was more than two decades old, and was running without any updates for more than five years.
"Take the best of Google everywhere on the web!" the toolbar said. "Google Toolbar is faster, sleeker and more personalized than ever before!"
The marketing message suits Google well in the year 2000, the time the search engine was only two years old.
This time around, the toolbar had long surpassed its usefulness. After all, in 2021, practically everyone on the web knows Google.
But still, Google Toolbar was definitely an important piece of internet history because it helped shape the way browsers behave in the modern days of the internet and mobile.
With the death of Google Toolbar, the product has joined others like Google Bookmarks, Poly, Google Play Movies & TV, Google Cardboard, Loon, Google+ and many more.