Maybe this week?

Jul 5, 2005 19:09 GMT  ·  By

Fritz Schneider, one of Google's engineers, has posted an announcement on Mozilla's website, saying that we should expect a Google Toolbar version for Firefox to be released quite soon.

Google's interest for Firefox is well known, but such a project hasn't been developed up until now, even though Google Toolbar for IE has been around for about 4 years now.

Schneider believes that Google Toolbar for Firefox will be released on July 7 and will have just about the same facilities as its IE version, except for the Pop-up blocker, which is already integrated in the Firefox.

Most recent Web analysis studies have pointed out that Firefox has increased its market share, which is now estimated at between 10 and 12% of the browser market.

The fact that Google has decided to launch this application can be seen as yet another confirmation of Firefox's increasing impact.

A few weeks ago, IBM recommended to its employees to use the browser from the Mozilla Foundation, and Yahoo has launched several months ago a version of its toolbar compatible with Firefox.

Some people are going as far as to say that Firefox's increasing success has forced Microsoft to launch Internet Explorer 7.0 earlier than planned.