Yahoo Inc. now follows in the steps of Amazon and Vivisimo by offering a free search toolbar for the immensely popular Firefox. Thursday the company announced the launch of a beta release of a toolbar for the popular browser.
Web analysts see it as a strategic move. The aim is to allow people one-click access to Yahoo services. Mainly, it aims to get users to use Yahoo! Search Engine from the toolbar itself. It also lets users search keywords on the current site s/he is visiting without manually specifying the parameters on the search engines. There's also a search history to check previous searches.
It’s a lot similar to the one that is already available with the Internet Explorer.
The toolbar includes Babel Fish a translation tool provided by Overture Services Inc. With this function you can translate web pages written in foreign languages.
Additionally, Yahoo’s e-mail subscribers will now get mail notification and mail alerts through this software.
Firefox which enjoys 5 percent share of the browser market was developed by the Mozilla Foundation. A senior exec from marketing said “this proves how popular Firefox is. It also proves the success of the Mozilla platform.”
The browser’s popularity can be measured by the fact that it was downloaded 23 million times since November when the 1.0 version was released.
Currently the toolbar is available only for Windows. A spokesman from Yahoo Inc. said “We will be releasing versions for the Mac OS X and Linux in the near future. We will also be adding Anti-Spyware feature to our toolbox in our later versions.”
While a lot of individual users are expected to be happy with this freebie, analysts warn corporates against migrating from MS’ Internet Explorer to Firefox.
They point out that FireFox’s growth is so far ‘unsustainable’. Its features were designed more for individual users. Corporates need to think twice before using Firefox because it has repeatedly been targeted by worms and viruses. That is the reason why it cannot compete with the Internet Explorer. The analysts expect that Microsoft may consider retaliating with an upgrade, but that may depend on its upgrade plans for Windows besides the development of the much awaited Longhorn operating system.
