Google Browser Sync not coming to Firefox 3
June 13th, 2008Buried in the comments of Lifehacker’s last add-on report, Todd Homind was able to get a direct response from the Google Browser Sync team:
Thanks for trying out Google Browser Sync and for all of your feedback. It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.
For those of you who want to continue to use Firefox 2, we’ll maintain support for old versions of Google Browser Sync through 2008. After that, we can recommend a few other products that scratch a similar itch. We hope that one of them works for you:
Mozilla Weave from Mozilla Labs- Offers bookmark and history synchronization across computers.
Google Toolbar for Firefox - Store your bookmarks online and access them from any computer online. [although, this is not 3.0 compatible as of writing]
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - Synchronizes your bookmarks across all computers where it is installed.
Regards,
The Google Team
June 13th, 2008 at 10:36 am
No! The one REALLY nice thing that Google Browser Sync does is sync open tabs as well. Does anyone know of another extension that does this (or would anyone like to start writing one? :)
June 13th, 2008 at 11:26 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
[...] Browser Syncを便利に使わせてもらっていたのだが、alex.polvi.netによると Firefox 3 [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[...] via Alex Polvi [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Not sure how to sync open tabs properly, but if anyone’s interested in trying, a quick and dirty hack is to just copy over the sessionstore.js file from a running firefox.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:00 am
[...] foi divulgado através do site do Alex.povi.net que a equipe de desenvolvimento do google browser sync não irá preparar a atualização dessa [...]
June 14th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
The next Weave release will sync open tabs.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:19 am
At this time Opera 9.5 made a wonderfull surprise!
It is the first time operabeats the fox!
June 16th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Wow! Google what are u thinking?
June 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Man, this sucks. The killer feature for GBS is not bookmarks or whatnot; there have always been like three or four alternatives to that. It’s the syncing of stored passwords! I’ll be seriously bummed if I can’t find an alternative for that one.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Gotta agree with Schmolle; the add-in synchronized far more than just bookmarks. In addition to bookmarks and passwords, I sync cookies (which is pretty critical for effective password sync) and history.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Noooooooo! I used browser sync every day to sync up my desktop, laptop, and work pc or apple machine. This is really going to hurt my productivity. Why Google, why?
June 16th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This is one of my bread & butter addons, and of all the extensions I thought would not be ported over, Google’s extension - browser sync - was last on that list. I would have thought of all the extension developers out there Google would have no problem updating theirs for such a prominent release.
I’m sure you guys are up to your ears in projects, but you started this little tool - you’ve got a lot of people who make use of and depend on it - the least you could do is take a little time to update it for Firefox 3. As a user of multiple PCs (work & home), this type of thing is extremely useful, and losing that functionality is going to hurt.
I sure hope you guys rethink this decision.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:49 am
From what it looks like, Weave has intentions to do all that GBS does. Can’t seem to get a quick handle on when exactly, though. Oh, well; I’ll have to delay upgrading to FF3 until all Add-ons I have are either available or made redundant. Bummer, though…
June 17th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
I agree with everybody: A critical add-on for me. I use XP and MAC with the same browser environment since a long, long time and this utility serves me very well.
Please, Google, reconsider your decision!
June 18th, 2008 at 9:02 am
You mean to tell me that as big as google is you cant find a couple of developers to keep browser sync alive? I’m very disappointed. browser sync was awesome and could have been huge is they added a few extra features to it.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Oh boy. This is not good news. I just upgraded one of my machines to 3 and now no bookmark sync.
Google, how could you leave us in the lurch like this after gving us this nice sync program.
On to try some of the other options.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
This really does blow! Could google be thinking about releasing a browser themselves? Does anyone have a solution to this problem? 3.0 is definitely working better than 2.0 but i will not upgrade work PC and home Mac Pro to 3.0 until i have a good solution to sync.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am
I’m adding my disappointment in Google discontinuing GBS.
It is also interesting how Google is handling the avalanche of negative response to the “announcement.”
Google haven’t posted anything official in the Google-Firefox-Extensions group, which has received hundreds of complaints about GBS being dropped, so the only “announcement” that any of us have is the -report of the email received- on lifehack.org.
A long thread in the G-F-E group that WAS called “Please upgrade browser sync for firefox 3.0″ was changed today to “Weave is the future. Try Weave instead!”
The user who changed the thread also posted that Mozilla “OFFICIALLY plans” to add these features. He also refers to Google’s “official” announcement of discontinuance of GBS by giving a link to slachdot.org which eventually leads you back to the lifehack.org post.
I checked the Mozilla Weave site and I couldn’t find anything that says they are going to “officially” do anything. They do say they are planning to implement the framework so that third-parties can develop applications. That seems to be somewhat short of official plans.
I made a post to the G-F-E group, which is moderated by Google, listing several market reasons they were tarnishing their image by the sudden discontinuance of G-B-E, and the fact that it just worked, and never required much support, so Google were ABLE to forget about it.
After several days, that post (which I copied myself on and got) has not appeared on the group. I don’t know if it was “moderated” out or what. The user who changed the thread title and posted the erroneous “official” announcement sure had no problems getting posted.
I’m really beginning to wonder what Google is up to. And I’m really beginning to doubt it has anything to do with the welfare of their users.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
[...] via Alex Polvi [...]
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Darn, I too just discovered this the hard way… I’m uninstalling Firefox and going to the prior release until this is resolved.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:26 am
This is just one more reason to be VERY wary when getting used to putting your “stuff” out there, where someone else controls the future of the data repository. Open-Source rocks for the very reason that Google, while it’s a great search engine, kinda sucks: everything’s closed except for API, and they own the rights to all the aggregate data. When you think about it, which is more valuable: the needle or the haystack? Google owns all the needles and you’re left with a big, huge haystack. Happy? I think we need a high-quality Open-Source search engine at this point…so I can migrate to it. Cheers!
June 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
very good
July 7th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Aaaarrgghhh… Now what do I do…dammit..Has anyone asked for the source code :)
July 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] kompatibel mit Mozillas neuestem Browser. Eine prominente Ausnahme ist Google Browser Sync, dessen Entwicklung eingestellt wurde. Google empfiehlt stattdessen die Verwendung von Mozilla Weave oder Foxmarks. Im Gegensatz zu [...]
July 16th, 2008 at 2:37 am
I have to say “Google is evil”.
July 17th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Google Sync Team come back, I need this add-on.
I tried the suggested addons but all they do is to sync bookmarks.
No cookies, passwords, last accessed tab….
Thanks.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
And that is why Google will always behind in everything they do and that will just reflect in their stock.
This should give yahoo a chance to take over where they leave off.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:26 am
i just upgraded to firefox 3 on my mac and work pc. couldn’t believe it google sync hadn’t been updated. disappointed and frustrated with that. don’t offer something that isn’t going to be supported. fine if you move to a paid product, but don’t just dump it and run off to new vista’s. wonder if this will happen with android as well…..
October 27th, 2008 at 12:53 am
With the code available, I wonder if someone can work on it to store bookmarks, passwords, settings and cookies into a site specified by the user!
We could then just use pages.google.com to store our data and access it just like GBS used to!
November 14th, 2008 at 4:41 am
[...] via Alex Polvi [...]