RIP: No Google Browser Sync For Firefox 3
We were quite excited moving to Firefox 3, but with the move many of the extensions stopped working all together. One of the extensions that stopped working for us was Greasemonkey, for which luckily we found a alternative some time back.
Few other extensions like Google Toolbar and Google Browser Sync which we used to sync up our bookmarks, tabs and history across computers had also stopped working. We expected Google to release a update soon but learnt today that the Google Browser Sync extension will no longer be supported for Firefox 3.
Below is a response from the Google team to a user;
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 [labs.Mozilla.com] from Mozilla Labs—Offers bookmark and history synchronization across computers.
Google Toolbar for Firefox [toolbar.Google.com]—Store your bookmarks online and access them from any computer online.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer [add-ons.mozilla.org]—Synchronizes your bookmarks across all computers where it is installed.
Regards,
The Google Team
This is really a bad way to put an end to a real good product which made our lives easier with keeping information synchronized between multiple Firefox browsers.
For those who have using Google Browser Sync to synchronize bookmarks between multiple PCs and browsers can check out our earlier post about keeping your bookmarks synchronized between browsers.
For the rest we can just say Rest In Peace Google Browser Sync.
Adam Dempsey
June 13th, 2008 at 5:16 pm #
I’ve recently started using Weave from Mozilla Labs, and it’s not perfect yet but it’s shaping up to be a great replacement!
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Keith Dsouza
June 13th, 2008 at 9:47 pm #
Adam, I too have started to give Weave a try and hope that it starts to include all the features from Google Browser Sync. It was really one good tool to do everything and making a replacement would be hard if not impossible,
I am just wondering if Google is short of staff or are starting to ignore a browser they supported so well, for Instance where is support for Google Toolbar for Firefox 3? There are quite a few other add-ons that have been ditched.
And it is not that they have not had ample amount of time to release updates, many smaller add-on developers have got on with it, it surprises me that a company as big as Google does not have resources to move on with their work.
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