I use the Google toolbar and I love it. The main thing I use it for is to easily search our intranet – using the feature that lets you add buttons to access any search you want.
Today the toolbar upgraded itself – which is OK. But what I thought was very aggressive (and a little evil) was that after it upgraded it showed this pop up
The pop-up stayed in front of the browser so you had to click the OK to make it go away. If you did just click the OK without reading the panel then it would change your default search to Google. Now I imagine a lot of people would just click OK and have their default changed.
I think if anything is going to be changing your defaults then you should be actively specifying it. I would expect this from some dodgy toolbar company – but not Goggle. The Daily Search Cast today shed some light in this… IE7 is released today and it comes with a search box that will send searches to your default search engine. What’s more Microsoft is going to upgrade everyone’s browser next month. If you haven’t changed your default then it will be Microsoft. So Google and the other search engines are trying to get your default search set to them.
This is probably a sign of things to come. When you go to Ask they ask you if you would like to change your default to them. I changed my default to our internal search – which makes it even easier for me. I still have the Google toolbar so I can search the web easily.
