My home laptop has updated its Google toolbar under IE6. 'Add buttons to your toolbar', 'bookmarks' and 'send to - gmail, blogger' buttons have appeared. I can't remember if I allowed auto updates or not.

Mine did the same thing, and i also dont remember having auto updates on. I think something funny is going on as i dont see many others having it. I just got done getting blocked out of g then that pops up, hopefully its not related to watching bh's. I do say tho that it is probaly the worst tool bar I have seen, pathetic. Maybe googlegay will respond.

BH, not here, but an interesting thought. The layout is lame and too noobish. I also notice that https pages get pr and they are not in googles index, these are dabase files accessed via browser and its getting PR? lol a PR 6 at that. I guess they wanted to give me a heads up on what they think about my private dbpage link structure.

Mine updated as well. And I believe there is NOT a setting to turn off auto-update via the toolbar. I think some people have blocked it by using a custom setting in their firewall etc. but in general the toolbar automatically updates for everyone. I could be wrong though.

Some of the default settings in the updated toolbar are BS. Plus it added several new things to the right-click menu when on webpages or even within form elements. I haven't figured out how to remove them yet.

Still debating whether to keep it installed or switch to a different TB.

Todd

I am sure I had no Auto-Update option set. I accepted the change.

It also gave the option to make Google my default Search Engine and I accepted that. But when I pressed F5 i still got Microsoft's search. Maybe I misunderstood the question.

Seems like a ramping up of the Search Engine wars to me. Google has never been so presumptive before and given such uninformative choices.

I've immediately removed the extra buttons - I recently moved my blog from Blogger onto Wordpress, don't use GMail, and don't use Google bookmarks. I added Google Blogsearch button though because I use that a lot and it is increasingly difficult to get to from the home page.

I have ended up with a much reduced toolbar that I prefer.

[edited by: Iguana at 11:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 15, 2006]

I just had to do a recovery on my computer ( not related to g) and got the old toolbar back. I prefer the dropdown menu. Im wondering if having the PR thingy turned off will prevent them being able to update it. That new style TB was sad

It is a very changed Toolbar. I just typed the name of a band in and got a list of auto-suggestions such as '(band) lyrics', '(band) boston', '(band) lyrics'. These suggestions are not from anything I've typed in - it's the first time I've searched for them - so it has changed from history to Google's suggestion.

i think they are getting those results from Google Suggest which makes me wonder if resources are an issue there, its essentially getting suggest results and its doing it on the fly, so its got to be working something in the background and also some additional bandwidth?

If you have to block it on a firewall, thats a probolem with me and i will need to look in to that. Thats an indicator that its phoning home and sending something to them. Surely its search data, but if they do not say that in their eula, they may be facing issues.

i work heavliy with eulas and software (especially phone home) and you got to be careful with that kind of stuff.

Edit: I found some info.

"The Google Toolbar automatically sends only standard, limited information to Google, which may be retained in Google's server logs. It does not send any information about the web pages you visit (e.g., the URL), unless you use Toolbar's advanced features."

You do not need to provide any personal information in order to download and use the Google Toolbar."

However, it further says:

If you have Google Toolbar Version 4.0 or above, your copy of Google Toolbar includes a unique application number. When you install Google Toolbar, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded are sent back to Google. Also, when Google Toolbar automatically checks to see if a new version is available, the current version number and the unique application number are sent to Google. The unique application number is required for Google Toolbar to work and cannot be disabled.

Basically, they are saying that you do not need to provide any personal information to use it. Yet at the same time, why would you because you are give an PIN unique to your install? That could mean that they have all the unique install pin's in a db and can actually view each persons search data based off of the Pin thats unique.

I gues to most people its really not important to them, but for me, i have seen what phone home can provide and I do not think that i will be using Google Toobar any longer.

I did not like the 'new and improved' updated version of the tool bar so I removed it.

What a mess it was!

Ann

Just go to the settings and get rid of the stuff you dont like. I made it look just like the old version.

It won't work like the old version, because the drop down history (the most valuable feature to me) is now gone. So I'm taking it off all my computers and my mother's computers and going to go find something else. Smooth move, Google.

I've gone back to version 3.0, because the new one was always trying to connect to the internet, but it's updated itself a second time, so looked in windows explorer, and there was a file called "google toolbar notifier" so I deleted that, I'll wait a see what happens now?

Having one IE window open, right clicking from a long list of URLs from that page, invariably IE crashes now after a few dozen right clicks. If I close the original window, it works again for a few dozen more clicks, then crashes again (toolbars at the top morph from what they should, pages don't load). After a couple more times of crashing quicker I have to restart to get IE to work properly again.

Steve b

THANK YO SO MUCH! :)

Now i know what the deal is..... I know some might think i am nuts for what i do, but for me it is necessary.

I at many times of the day work out of IE and it is a huge list of (customer numbers), in that list i need to review more than 100-300 orders daily. Its easier for me to open each account in a new window. Since the tool bar update, i was haveing the exact issue you just described and it was annoying the **** out of me. You just increased my work perfomance by verifying that and i now have unintsalled the toolbar.

i can not thank you enough for pointing that out to me.