Google Firefox Sync tool a winner

Stan Beer
Friday, 09 June 2006 19:52

Your IT - Home IT

While all the media and Google fanboys go crazy over the pedal powered Google Spreadsheet application, trust Google to go quietly about its business and release a genuinely useful online product. Google Browser Sync enables you to save all your pertinent Firebox settings, including bookmarks, passwords and whatever else you need to be up and running the last time you used your browser in a central location at Google.

This new application, called Google Browser Sync (no prizes for guessing which browser Google prefers), will be particularly useful for Firefox users who work from multiple sites. Let's face it, internet access from computers other than our own is becoming an increasingly common occurrence. Having access to all your bookmarks, passwords, history and cookies is what turns the browser into your own personal online desktop, which is the value add of this application.

In order to gain access to Google Browser Sync, you will have to set up a Google account which is fair enough. Consipracy theorists who worry that Google already has too much data on individuals may not like it, but I can't really see how you could implement such a convenient and powerful system any other way.

And it is a powerful system that should not be dismissed lightly. This is what Google is really good at. Rather than trying to emulate the desktop experience online, with predictably poor results, Google Browser Sync is all about making the online experience richer, more functional and more pervasive. This is exactly the sort of thing that Google should be working on.

Next up, Google should be looking to integrate Google Calendar and Gmail into an integrated online product that can be easily saved and synchronised with your local storage. I know that last bit will be anathema to all the online fanboy fanatics. However, that's what most users want. It's a real pain to be totally disconnected from valuable information you know you have stored away just because you don't happen to have access to an internet connection.