Google looks like it's waging a “translation war” against Facebook. Earlier this week the social network revealed a translation program for third-party websites using Facebook Connect. Google then retaliated with a new translation gadget for websites and is now taking things a step further by showing off the translation features in the new Google Toolbar for Firefox.
“Last week was a big one for Google Toolbar: we released the new Google Toolbar with Sidewiki for Internet Explorer and Firefox allowing you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. But there's more: with the new version of Google Toolbar, our advanced in-page translation also became available for Firefox, making it easy to read a webpage in another language with the click of a button,” Christian Stefansen, product manager for the Toolbar Team,
wrote.
The translation feature had been available in the Internet Explorer version of the Toolbar for several months now but it has just now made its way to the Firefox one. The tool detects if the page you are visiting is in a different language than the one set in the browser's options and offers to translate it. All it takes is one click and users don't have to leave the page. New pages will also be automatically translated and the ones with dynamic content will be done in real time.
The new version of the Toolbar also comes with website suggestions and sponsored links for the search box similar to the Suggestions box on Google's website. A much more interesting feature, and one that could prove very handy at times, is support for Firefox 3.5's new Private Browsing mode. When a user turns on private browsing the Toolbar will also stop recording search history. At the same time it will also deactivate Page Rank, Web History and the
newly introduced Sidewiki, which allows users to leave comments on any website they choose.
Google Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox can be downloaded here.
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