a couple new google firefox extensions
Google has just released a couple of new Firefox extensions. The first one is called Coogle Safe Browsing and provides a very slick interface to protect against phishing. The second extension is called Blogger Web Comments and it shows you what bloggers are saying about the page you're currently visiting.
Both of these look pretty good to me. What do you all think?
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
Looks pretty cool. I think it's really neat how Google is contributing to the Mozilla project.
So I wonder how this thing works... I guess it analyzes the page and tries to figure out if it's trying to act like it's from eBay and actually is linking to some random IP address?
Posted by: ispiked | December 14, 2005 8:10 PM
Safe browsing is US only?!
Posted by: Pooya Karimian | December 14, 2005 8:26 PM
"Google Safe Browsing for Firefox is only available for download for users within the US."
It's a pity...
Posted by: Wladimir Palant | December 14, 2005 8:48 PM
The second one is actually lower-case blogger - it's an interface to blogsearch.google.com, not to just Blogger-powered blog search.
Posted by: Phil Ringnalda | December 14, 2005 8:50 PM
Wow, Web Comments actually uses E4X to parse RSS. So, why isn't Thunderbird? :)
Posted by: Wladimir Palant | December 14, 2005 8:55 PM
I just used http://ieproxy.com/ and put in the Google extensions URL, installing it that way. Means I can install it, even though I live outside the US. Works like a charm :)
Posted by: Phill Bryant | December 14, 2005 9:16 PM
Thanks, Phil. Corrected.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 14, 2005 9:40 PM
I don't like Google's incompetence for making the phishing detector available to USA users only, I'd like to know their reasoning behind it. Phill, thanks for the ieproxy work around.
Posted by: Lachlan Hunt | December 14, 2005 10:26 PM
Lachlan: probably legal reasons. We'll get it too, I presume, given time.
Posted by: David Naylor | December 14, 2005 11:12 PM
Coogle != Google.
Posted by: Lady Godiva | December 14, 2005 11:47 PM
I'm a bit disappointed by Google, since they make the Phishing Extension only available in the U.S. I don't know if this is the reason, but I cannot download it anyway. If I click the button on the install page it loads for a second and nothing happens. No extension popup or blocking bar. I manually added google to the extensions install whitelist, but i don't get it to work.
The point is, that you don't see anything on that page that indicates it should only work for the U.S.
Same problem I (and others) had with Firefox Flix. I don't see a problem in providing worldwide support ... (http://glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/images/videoAtGoogle.gif)
Posted by: Sensemann | December 15, 2005 12:03 AM
SO is this what Ben Goodger has been doing when not (unnecessarily IMHO) re-writing the Options dialogue?
Posted by: pd | December 15, 2005 2:53 AM
The first thing that came to my mind without even checking out the extension (lord knows I have plenty right now...) is that G must have some surf tracking involved with it in order to grab our Attention.
Their closed-box mentality will be their downfall no matter how much "stuff" they give away IMO.
Posted by: Biily | December 15, 2005 3:17 AM
asa, its not "you all". its "y'all".
Posted by: Grayson Mixon | December 15, 2005 4:13 AM
Will this work for trunk version?
Posted by: Kurt | December 15, 2005 4:35 AM
Anybody have a direct link so I can try to bump the max version?
Posted by: Kurt | December 15, 2005 4:36 AM
Here's a hack to install these extensions if you located outside the US
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/google-provides-phishing-website.html
Posted by: Amit Agarwal | December 15, 2005 6:21 AM
probably google is afraid of lawsuits outside the u.s. What if some Phisher or even some Non-Phisher sues them for tagging their website as phishy?
Posted by: testboy | December 15, 2005 8:29 AM
How do we know if Google is collecting personal information off valid sites from this extension.
Posted by: none | December 15, 2005 12:03 PM
Thanx Amit for the link ;)
Posted by: Sensemann | December 15, 2005 1:30 PM
none: read the user agreement and the privacy policy.
Posted by: testboy | December 15, 2005 1:59 PM
testboy, exactly.. i'm not sure what to think good intensions but google has there was of agrevating statistics which invades users privacy. but has good motives i guess
Posted by: jn | December 15, 2005 7:27 PM
http://www.phishy.com/fake.html doesn't work :( where can i test it?
Posted by: dd | December 15, 2005 7:35 PM
DIRECT LINK(right click save as or install) I'll probably get my ass kicked by google but hey they shouldn't keep this to one part of the country
Posted by: dd | December 15, 2005 7:43 PM
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8760
"Here are two things that bother me about this extension:
1) Every request is transmitted to Google over HTTP, i.e. in clear-text. This is not good. Here is why: Consider a web application that uses SSL to encrypt the session. If this web application were to submit private information about you via a GET request (i.e in the URL, such as a credit card number), this will now be transmitted to http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/lookup in clear-text, allowing someone on your network segment, or any router in between yourself and google.com to sniff the information off the wire.
2) The extension sends the entire GET request to Google. If a web application were to send private information via GET parameters, this will now be transmitted to Google."
Posted by: Google sucks | December 16, 2005 12:21 AM
This whole thing seems horribly "unsafe".
This seems to put all users personal data at risk.
...
Posted by: none | December 16, 2005 8:09 AM
A CA implemented something similar to "Safe Browsing" for IE a few years ago called TrustToolBar.
Posted by: appoloin | December 16, 2005 10:14 AM