New Google FireFox Extensions

December 15, 2005 2:42 PM

Google releases new FireFox Extensions, one for what they call Blogger Web Comments, and another to prevent against phishing - Google Safe Browsing.
posted by allkindsoftime (22 comments total)

neat
posted by TechnoLustLuddite at 2:45 PM on December 15, 2005

a part of me feels it's great google is contributing in ways that promotes people to use FF over...ahem, IE. the other part of me is just plain scared and can't rid of the thought that google might be the next giant evil.

all at the same time, i am wondering why i would want to install an extention that'll show other people's opnions on a site i'm viewing when i can just formulate my own.
hmm.
posted by grafholic at 2:56 PM on December 15, 2005

and another to prevent against phishing

I thought Firefox did this already.
posted by NoMich at 3:00 PM on December 15, 2005

I kinda wish I knew what the anti-phishing thing actually did. First, I can't figure out what about the test page triggered it, since there wasn't even a form on the test page, and it definitely seemed to be on Google's server. Second, I searched my spam folder for 'paypal', clicked on the first link ... and no reaction at all as a fake Paypal page came up.

And the blogger web comments are great only in a cringeworthy, "OMG!! I got a TotalFark subscription for my birthday, so I'm posting it to my blog", kind of way.

All in all, I'm thinking Google's 0 for 2 here. YM, as they say, MV.
posted by boaz at 3:15 PM on December 15, 2005

I need an extension that sends an electric shock to the morons who have circumvented FireFox's pop up blocking mechanism so they can get their stupid ads up under my browser window. Can they be stupid enough to think those ads work?

Or an extension to tell me when the next extension is going to be released by Google.
posted by fenriq at 3:23 PM on December 15, 2005

boaz: " I kinda wish I knew what the anti-phishing thing actually did. "

Why don't you read Google's safebrowsing FAQ?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:25 PM on December 15, 2005

Sorry...

Google Safe Browsing for Firefox is only available for download for users within the US.
posted by bachelor#3 at 3:31 PM on December 15, 2005

Whoop-dee-freakin'-do.
posted by mkultra at 3:33 PM on December 15, 2005

Why don't you read Google's safebrowsing FAQ?

Oh, I did. It just seemed awfully vague on that front, and since the real phishing URL I clicked was of the form http://www.paypal.a.whole.lotta.other.words.spam-site.com/, it seemed a bit odd that it wasn't caught.
posted by boaz at 3:39 PM on December 15, 2005

MS business plan: get a large foothold, become evil, take over everything else with insidious laughter.

Google business plan: get a large foothold, be nice, take over everything then become evil with insidious laughter.
posted by SirOmega at 3:52 PM on December 15, 2005

13. Why is Google Safe Browsing only available in the US?

We are currently pursuing a license that will allow us to provide this protection for all countries outside the US.

WTF google with all their money and resources can't figure out a worldwide license?
posted by Mitheral at 4:10 PM on December 15, 2005

"i am wondering why i would want to install an extention that'll show other people's opnions on a site i'm viewing when i can just formulate my own."

grafholic, you slay me.

Of course, as metafilter demonstrates, you don't need a newfangled extension to get other people's opinions.
posted by adamrice at 4:30 PM on December 15, 2005

I tried the web comments extension and I find that in many cases it shows me other pages within the same blog, which link to the page I'm looking at. Not hugely helpful...
posted by mmahaffie at 5:19 PM on December 15, 2005

Here's how to install the Safe Browsing extension outside the US.
posted by labnol at 8:31 PM on December 15, 2005

Google business plan: get a large foothold, be nice, take over everything then become evil with insidious laughter.

Google business plan: fling fucking everything but the kitchen sink at the wall, see what sticks. Sell more ads to pay for it all.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:48 PM on December 15, 2005

Interesting, I remember years ago there was something called ThirdVoice, and I remember and how pissed off people got at seeing comments on their page that they couldn't remove. Here's a wired article on it.

Though it looks like this is different in that the applet is just searching for blogs that link to a specific page, (like link:http://del.icio.us) and putting the results in a side window.
posted by bobo123 at 12:15 AM on December 16, 2005

Weird. It won't install on my win2k laptop. Instead, I get "Blogger Web Comments 1.0 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 1.5. (Blogger Web Clomment 1.0 will only work with Firefox versions from 1.5 to 1.5.99)."
posted by SteveInMaine at 2:03 AM on December 16, 2005

We are currently pursuing a license that will allow us to provide this protection for all countries outside the US.

Huh? A licence from whom? To do what?

This doesn't make any sense at all. Can someone help me out and explain what they mean?
posted by grahamwell at 2:30 AM on December 16, 2005

maybe the NSA has to issue it?
posted by nostrada at 4:31 AM on December 16, 2005

Possibly, but why would this have anything to do with cryptography? What is it doing? Very odd.
posted by grahamwell at 4:54 AM on December 16, 2005

I've installed the blogger comments plugin. It's pretty neat, when it actually finds stuff quickly. There is an article about some aspects of the phishing plugin that are suspect.
posted by chunking express at 6:54 AM on December 16, 2005

Sure, the blogger comments plugin is neat, but what I don't get is that it pulls posts from certain blogs. The part about that I don't get is which blogs it pulls comments from--is it a short list of preferred blogs, or is it just any blog out there? And I'm talking non-blogger, MovableType-driven blogs that I'm seeing here.
posted by scottj at 9:03 AM on December 17, 2005