Slashdot Mirror
Google Browser Sync To Be Discontinued
Dude With An Afro writes "What could have been a great Google project is now history. For those who never used it, Google Browser Sync was a Firefox extension that synchronized your bookmarks, web history, browser sessions and passwords across multiple computers by temporarily saving them to Google's servers. According to the Google Browser Sync team: '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 all of those who fell in love with Google's Browser Sync, our only hope now is to resort to poorly maintained 3rd party extensions without Google's blessing." While it was undoubtedly a useful utility, the argument can also be made that it wasn't the most secure extension in the world, what with having your personal data kept on Google's servers and shot around the internet.
the newly released Opera 9.5 has introduced a sync'ing capability.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Browser Sync was so awesome, I'll miss it *slits wrists*
The only part of it I use actively is the bookmarks sync, which is, although slightly buggy, very useful
So what other bookmark-sync should I switch to?
I'm not intersted in thos bookmark sharing services, just having my own bookmarks synced between the computers I use regularly.
sudo ergo sum
Yes, yes, I know trolling, but I couldn't resist it.
After it lost all of my bookmarks twice, I gave up on it. I was using the same version of Firefox on Linux and on Windows, not exactly a strange setup. I never used it again after that.
I think it's a little mean to refer to Foxmarks as a "poorly maintained 3rd party extension." I've been using it since before Google's browser sync existed, and I never bothered to try out Google's extension because Foxmarks worked perfectly. If you need a replacement, I would recommend checking them out.
If they are tossing out browser sync, are they gonna toss the sync into the kitchen?
Just wonderin'.
What a crock! That was a great extension, this sucks.
I've been using Bookmarks Sync and Sort for quite a while now - all you need is a FTP/WebDAV server on which you have an account, which I guess every slashdotter should have...
The extension does everything I need, and it works like a charm; the only problem is that is not (currently) FF3 compatible.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Um, wasn't Google browser sync also a third party extension?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Google Sync, Del.icio.us, etc. are spiffy, but I want to control my own data. I have a webserver and the willingness to get in over my head, so what's a geek to do to host this for himself? I'd settle for just keeping the bookmarks.
I have a Drupal 5 site up and running. Ideally, I'd like to be able to add a bunch of bookmarks to it, then make an RSS feed of them. Then I could let my browsers turn that feed into bookmark folders. Unfortunately, I've only been able to get an RSS feed of links to pages on my own site, and then would have to clink on the links on those pages to get to the real sites (example: my bookmark would be to mysite/bookmarks/slashdot, and that page would have a link to here). Ick. Has anyone else had success with such a thing?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Google should know better. Abandonware? Open source it! Then if people care they can upgrade it for FF3.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Not much else left to say.
And somehow giving all my bookmarks to the unknown foxmarks people is supposed to be better?
http://labs.mozilla.com/featured-projects/#weave
Syncs lots of things, including bookmarks.
Mozilla Weave does similar stuff... http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/
I've been using it for a while and it's pretty good, even though it's still under lots of development.
For those of you wanting something similar, just use Roboform2Go. Drop it on a USB thumb drive and carry it around with you. Plug it into any PC and it loads Roboform2Go and automatically integrates itself into IE or FF. Stores passwords, personal info, notes, etc. When you're done, unplug the thumbdrive and it vanishes. Best thing since sliced bread!
I switched to the Mozilla Weave project, and its been working great when the servers stay up. Provides most of the same features of google sync. http://labs.mozilla.com/featured-projects/
I use del.icio.us
Granted, it only saves bookmarks, but I wouldn't be comfortable with all that other stuff being anywhere else but my machine anyway. My passwords I don't even like being on my machine. I keep them in my head.
Technoli
Foxmarks is by no means poorly maintained, even as a non-paying user they provided excellent support when I had a problem. And if you are concerned about your privacy, there will soon be a good enough version of Weave which encrypts your information before uploading it to Mozilla's servers and is completely open source.
Never even knew there WAS such a thing.. I've always used Foxmarks with FF.. its really a great add-in...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
cp --preserve -r ~/.mozilla/* /mountpoint (a usb thumbdrive)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
In a manager's office at Google -
Employee: "You know boss, we really should devote some time to updating the Browser Sync tool to work with Firefox 3..."
Manager: "I have been meaning to talk to you about that... You see, we have been thinking about it, and there really isn't a way to make ad revenue from that tool. While it is cool and useful and all, I don't think people would be happy with ad links showing up randomly in their bookmark menus."
Employee: "Um, yeah... I agree with that. I didn't reslize..."
Manager: "The ad revenue thing? Yeah... well something has to pay for that 20% self-directed time since ad revenues are down. The good news is we think that the Google Toolbar can replace it, and we have a plan for monetizing that."
Employee: "Well, can I work on the FF3 upgrade in my 20% self-directed time and open source the tool?"
Manager: "We thought about that too - first, the Google Toolbar doesn't need the competition. Second, we can't release the code in the shape its in... people would throw our 'do no evil' slogan back at us and slashdot would be all a-titter. It would take as much to clean it up as it would just to get it to work with FF3, so we think it is at its end-of-life."
Employee: "um... o..k... thanks."
I've been using browsersync since it came out and it worked reasonably well except for the periodic trashing or losing of my bookmarks. It just seems really strange to me that there is not a good solution in this space as most people user multiple machines between home and work.
Is this because its a hard problem or is it because there is no opportunity to make money from it?
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I use Google sync on three computers. Unfortunately, it frequently leaves my bookmarks unsync'ed - keeping old bookmarks on one computer, even though I've deleted them on another, and failing to include new bookmarks that I've added. I still use it because it's better than nothing. It's not much better than nothing, though.
A brilliant idea shot down before it could really grow wings. :-(
Oh well, FoxMark it is... Google will have to find a different way to have my information.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
For those interested, Seamonkey (and previously Mozilla Suite) has a roaming profiles feature.
Its kind of amazing how the ability to share bookmarks between multiple computers by simply using the same bookmarks.htm file has been removed with the new bookmarking system in Firefox 3.
I've tried sharing the places.sqlite file between Linux and Windows and it doesn't seem to work correctly and it seems like Mozilla doesn't care at all about this regression.
Having bookmarks stored on third party servers
(Mozilla weave, Foxmarks, Google browser sync, Opera's Bookmarks sync,etc ) will always suffer from insecurity mentioned in the last line of the summary.
At least Opera still has the ability to share the bookmarks file between multiple profiles/OS's/PC's.
At least in FireFox, your bookmarks just exist as a plain ol' HTML file in your profile directory. You don't need any special tools to sync that across multiple machines, you just copy it between machines (or better, use FireFox Portable off a thumbdrive).
However, for those who really need their bookmarks accessible from anywhere, an old and simple method will completely solve your problem - Keep your bookmarks on a live website and set that to your homepage. When you want to add new ones, add them to the online version rather than locally. Problem solved, no help from Google required.
Reading this http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/06/weave-status-update/ seems to indicate that all the functionality of Google Browser Sync will be available in Weave shortly after FF3 is released.
So I'll be waiting until then to move to FF3.
I wonder if some of the Google Browser Sync team are working on Weave ?
I hate to sound a bit alarmist here, but which project can we expect to see go next?
I'm just that more hesitant to use google products, if they're prone to axing them without warning.
I discontinued using Browser Sync because it had a lot of bugs. It lost a lot of book marks and folders if you tried to organize them and attempted resyncing.
Google toolbar has a bookmarks button that is a nice and easy way to make your bookmarks available wherever you browse (even across browsers).
... I laughed out loud when I read that. S/he is living in some parallel universe if s/he thinks Google doesn't have plenty of information about our browsing history or tendencies. Do you use Gmail? Do you use Google to search? Do you use the Google toolbar? Adding my bookmarks to the mix doesn't seem to make my "personal data" any less secure.
As to the note in the OP about Google having all our personal data on their servers
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
There are tons of bookmark sync sites, but what I'd really like not to lose is the ability to restore whatever tabs I had open when I closed my browser. Like session restore but without a crash. Doing that across different machines is cute but I'd settle even for a local one. Anything else that does this out there?
i am disappointed in firefox-3.x new features, (just useless feature bloat to me) i went back to using Seamonkey which is the original Mozilla browser code released to the FOSS community to keep developed and maintained, i like it...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Foxmarks will let you store bookmarks on any webdav server, including with https.
Sharing the bookmarks.htm file doesn't allow multiple access at the same time.
As opposed to something like gMail, where all your data is keep on your personal system and never shot around the internet... oh wait.
I wanted to create an extension once that uses ssh to store and sync files on a personal shell/sftp account. Never got around to figuring out how to do it, seeing as ssh isn't supported in Firefox's javascript. Now I know it could probably be done with an XPCOM component, but I've started using del.ici.us since then. Then I realized I pretty much don't use my bookmarks anymore. Google works better.
Mozilla has their own add-on. Mozilla Weave. Still in beta, but does everything that Google Browser Sync did.
"undoubtedly a useful utility "???
Slashdot couldn't say anything nice about it when it came out. You ranted about privacy issues over and over. Now it's dead and you helped kill it.
I found the program extremely useful and now it's gone.
Thanks.
No, not always. There is an embarrassingly simple solution. Encrypt before send. There is no reason the server even needs to see the plain-text data. I would be surprised if this hasn't already been implemented into the open source extensions.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
http://labs.mozilla.com/featured-projects/#weave - though still in beta, was impressive last time I tried it. Just wish there was a similar feature for Safari on Mac and IE on Windows...
Awwww. I always thought Google Browser Sync worked a little better than Foxmarks. I was just waiting for them to release a FF3 version. Dang. Guess I need to move back to Foxmarks again.
Any hope of them open sourcing it? Probably not, right. Google is a user but thats it. Dang.
ok, so say its transmitted encrypted then
do you think its stored encrypted on the third party server ?
Now if I was running a company theres prolly some value in selling this information on about people's browsing habits and what kind of sites they'd bookmark possibly.
At the moment I dont need multiple access at the same time, Thanks for the information i'll give that a try soon.
It still feels like overkill having a HTTP server set up with Webdav just to share bookmarks between machines.
Also requiring a third party extension for what I could do before, with a single entry in the prefs.js file .
That should cover the scaling issues. There is still the need for a good look at security, but that shouldn't be too hard to do -- encrypt/decrypt all data on a password, or maybe even a public/private key pair. You'd have to copy the password or private key to another machine, but you'd only have to do it once.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
I was a heavy user of GBS for a while. Very nice tool, but they never did fix very problematic bugs in the bookmark syncing part of it. I almost immediately gave up on the windows syncing, and I had fairly quickly stopped using the cookie-syncing part when I discovered the cookies were breeding like coat hangers in a closet. Essentially there was too much state information that wasn't been tracked but which was needed to make things work properly, especially for the bookmarks.
As noted by many others, Foxmarks does a good job of the bookmark part of syncing. The heuristics are kind of flawed, but it's never caused the kinds of bookmark disasters that were frequent with GBS.
The last feature of GBS that I abandoned was the password syncing. This was an extremely useful capability and (AFaIK) unique to GBS. I'm not sure it was working correctly, but rather it may have had some of the same problems as the bookmark syncing, but less severe, perhaps because of the absence of dividers or more consistency in the way different versions handled the passwords. However, this may have been the security-related problem that caused Google to abandon the idea. The security model was actually very good (if I understand it properly). The encryption and decryption were handled on the client side, and Google's servers actually had no access to the data, just storing the encrypted files. You were the sole owner of your security key--and many people then proceeded to lose it and then complained to Google about the 'lost' data. (I think Google should have tried to set up some kind of key escrow service, but I don't blame them for steering clear of that difficult business.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I didn't realize I needed Google's blessing to use 3rd party plug-ins on a browser they don't even work on.
I've always used Foxmarks and will continue to. Weather Google blesses it or not...
This is really too bad for us. I've been using GBS for about 2.5 years. When I first started trying different plug-ins to handle the bookmark sync problem, I found Google's browser sync to work the best for 2 primary reasons (1) The sync tool was seamless/simple and (2) the google servers were fast/reliable.
I'm hoping that Foxmarks or some other service provides me a good replacement as far as user experience is concerned. However, the fact that google is dropping this tool tells me that they really didn't care much about the user data in the first place. In other words, our bookmarks were not likely being used to learn trending or to gain business.
Foxmarks on the other hand appears to have a whole business model wrapped around this one plug-in. So you better believe that Foxmarks is taking direct advantage of our bookmarking trends, which is less attractive to me.
GBS is (was) a nice plug-in, and something that Google should have had more pride in.
Never used google browser sync... but i can't use firefox without the delicious extension.
having one pool of bookmarks on the net, and then selection which group to show on each computer is just what everyone needs.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615
And i'm using it with firefox 3 already.
I'm glad I never tried Google's Firefox sync. del.icio.us is much better. I can access my bookmarks from any device with an Internet connection and a web browser. I can search my bookmarks by title word or key word.
"Its kind of amazing how the ability to share bookmarks between multiple computers by simply using the same bookmarks.htm file has been removed with the new bookmarking system in Firefox 3.
...? I'm using FF 3 and this still works. Mod parent overrated.
"
What the
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
First, keep in mind that I haven't used any of these extensions. I assume that at least one of them behaves in a secure manner, but can't actually confirm it.
ok, so say its transmitted encrypted then do you think its stored encrypted on the third party server ?That depends what you mean by "transmitted encrypted". You see, the secure behavior is to encrypt it, symmetrically, before you send the data to the server. Then, the server has no choice but to store it encrypted, because it is not capable of decrypting it. The key is on the client, not the server.
However, you might be thinking of https/ssl, which would not be a full solution in this context. SSL is a method for remote parties to communicate securely. You would be hiding your data from people in between you and the server, but not the server itself. In other words, if you only use SSL for encrypting, the server can see your data, which is unnecessary and unsafe. Using SSL will, however, prevent a man in the middle from corrupting your data, which a symmetric cypher alone will not do.
Now if I was running a company theres [probably] some value in selling this information on about people's browsing habits and what kind of sites they'd bookmark possibly.That is exactly why I doubt that Google's Browser Sync was ever secure. The open source extensions, however, I think would be (or at least could be).
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I, for one, feel safer knowing that my browser bookmarks are no longer kept on remote servers and shot around the internet.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go do some online bill payments and check my G-Mail.
For almost every build of GBS there was problems, quirks and annoying weird stuff in general. :/
However the final 2 builds (IIRC) were absoloutely fine for me, worked perfectly and saved me a heck of a lot of trouble and time, between Vista, XP, Ubuntu, work, desk, laptop I must've had 5 fully sync'd installs - it was great
The best part was, when it did work smoothly, history, passwords, cookies, bookmarks - the whole lot went - it was fantastic! - It'll be sorely missed.
The GP said "Encrypt before send." That means the server is storing the encrypted data that you sent, not that it was merely encrypted during transmission. If the user has the key, there's no reason that the server can't just store the encrypted information.
Bookmarks, bookmarks, bookmarks. Foxmarks and other add-ons will sync bookmarks. BFD.
It was the sync'd web sessions/cookies and passwords that made Google's add-on unique and incredibly useful for someone who had to use multiple computers at multiple locations throughout the day.
It's too bad all of you who are pushing Foxmarks as a replacement don't know that.
They make it sound like the decision not to support FF3 was a recent one. Bovine excrement. They'd lost interest months ago, and never intended to add such support. I got tired of waiting a while ago, and even wrote about my switch just this past week. The same thing is happening with lots of other extensions too, such as S3 Organizer which I've also abandoned. There's an old saying that nobody sees the bodies until the tide goes out, and a major release of something like Firefox is the tide going out. That's when you get to find out about all the projects whose developers actually wandered off months ago, but nobody had noticed because nothing had broken yet. Now it's broken. It's not a big surprise in most cases, but it is a little disappointing from an organization with the resources and reputation of Google.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Googles browser sync uses client-side encryption using a password. AFAIK others don't.
Personally, I wish I had looked into this before it was discontinued. However I'm just hearing about it now, I know, I suck, whatever, what I'd love is a local version. I install the backend on my primary desktop and my other machines sync from there. I often find myself browsing 10+ tabs on one machine, only to want to go sit outside for a while, bringing the laptop and spending half the time picking up where I left off. I know VNC would work, but it's sorta cumbersome, and terrible with media. So what I want is something that syncs cookies, bookmarks, currently open URL's, passwords, forms, hell, even history in case I need to go back through something.
... whether to a thumb drive or an Internet server? Who needs a company the size of Google, just for that?
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
Works better than Google.
If you read the Google Browser Sync docs, you would see that that is exactly the case; you put a password on the data, it was encrypted and sent to Google, and Google had no way to decrypt it (unless you chose a short or predictable password).
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Can you explain how you are sharing the places.sqlite file then ?
I've tried a symbolic link on Linux to the same file. The bookmarks are displayed but I cannot alter (add,delete,etc ) them.
Theres a bug here marked WONT FIX for setting a path to the places.sqlite file
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385077
It seems like the people from Mozilla are suggesting use Mozilla Weave as an alternative.
Thanks for clearing that up (even if Google Browser sync is discontinued), I wonder if all of other solutions actually take that approach.
Seriously, why has nobody solved this problem in a good way. I have multiple computers and devices that I want to sync my bookmarks with. I don't use just 1 browser, I generally use 3. Safari for those things tied into the OS. Like bring up Google maps from an address. Firefox 3 for daily browsing and use. Opera for some sites I visit that render ultra fast on it.
.Mac that only work for Safari. On Windows there are many utilities that handle syncing bookmarks. (Hell, IE saves bookmarks as files ... not a bad idea) Firefox is a bastard when it comes to this because bookmarks.html isn't reliable. You can read from it, just not write to it. Some services use a plugin, but aren't ported to Firefox 3 .. also no ETA. I haven't looked at Operas bookmarks, so I dunno how it is.
I know I am not alone. Many people (especially developers) have this problem and there isn't many choices. On the Mac you have services like
I just want all of my bookmarks to be centralized. I don't want social bookmarks, I want them private. They can be stored on a "public" system, I have nothing to hide in them. I just don't want them exposed to the general public, I like privacy and I don't want to be part of a data mining experiment.
There are also some sites that you can post your bookmarks to, but I want them locally. No real reason other then I like them in the browser it self.
I have also tried to solve this in the past, but Firefox really makes it difficult to pull off because of how they handle bookmarks.html If you know a way to solve this feel free to contact me.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I have just lost all faith in google. if they just dump products like that
I was really excited when this came out, but after using it for about a week I gave it up. It kept mangling my bookmarks and password. Which meant that my local copies got screwed up too. Maybe it got fixed later, but I got burned didn't want to try again. I wish they would have open sourced it, then maybe someone could have fixed it.
This is why online webapps have no future. If someone shuts down the service you're using, you're completely screwed.
>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.'
That hasn't stopped google from keeping *every other items in googles product lineup*.
Seriously though, google has *way* too many products, many of which are buggy, feature incomplete, and in perpetual beta status. It is about time they trimmed the fat in a big way and focused on improving their successful products, rather than trying to have a dinky and ignored entry in every category.
Personally, I use:
1. Search
2. Ads
3. Gmail (still in beta and now falling behind the competition...)
4. Reader (which, in terms of design, is probably the best google app ever)
5. Google groups (pretty good, but could see a lot of improvement)
6. Youtube (which has also fallen *way* behind the competition in terms of video resolution).
These are the products they need to improve, instead of letting every engineer scratch his personal itch.
roboForm using GoodSync ... awesome
I really liked browser sync and I'm sad to see it go. I have used it on a daily basis for years. I guess it didn't pick up enough of a user base to thrive.
Why should they keep it?
They can't serve advertisements that way.
I've put Feedburner.com, another Google non-advert-serving venture, on my dot-com death watch list, too, for the same reason.
Kriston
http://sqlite.org/faq.html#q5
This may be the source of your difficulty? Not sure.
Recognizing that Firefox 3 is only slated for release on Tuesday, I'd guess that you'll see more options forthcoming including an improved version of Weave.
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
> Having bookmarks stored on third party servers
> (Mozilla weave, Foxmarks, Google browser sync, Opera's Bookmarks sync,etc ) will always suffer from insecurity mentioned in the last line of the
> summary.
Not with Weave. Weave encrypts your data and the private key is stored only locally (not on their servers).
Not that they'll listen, but someone has started a petition online to try to save the project. I've been using the browser sync for months and love it. I'm signing the petition. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/googlebrowsersyncff3/
First off, I'm very disappointed: I've been using Browser Sync along with Bookmark Duplicate Detector, "Add Bookmark Here" and Tab Mix Plus' extensions to do what I want with my bookmarks for the first time ever.
;-)
Weave had better be good.
I got thinking - why do none of the suggested alternatives use a P2P protocol to share bookmarks between client machines?
I can see it fitting in to the scenario quite nicely in the "always-on" world (and a bookmark-sharing thread need not be associated with the browser thread, it can be run as a service).
And if you want to store your stuff in a central server too, just allow it onto your network
Is it already out there?
I'm happy with Weave so far; i only used GBS for the history sync. for passwords, nothing beats Roboform!
"While it was undoubtedly a useful utility, the argument can also be made that it wasn't the most secure extension in the world, what with having your personal data kept on Google's servers and shot around the internet."
Actually, I'd rather my data were held at Google than pretty much anywhere else. Not only are there incredibly strict procedures that govern the access to said data by Google employees, my data is then protected by big men with guns.
And as for "shot around the Internet" - with a PIN set, it's all encrypted anyway. And a heck of a lot more secure than your email, browser activity, IM, P2P...
I've been using GBS since the day it was released, this is really sad news. I've just swapped over to Foxmarks and so far, so good, but it only appears to sync when the browser is opened or closed. We'll see.