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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
But without a syncing mechanism, you have to be meticulous about making sure you always to it. What if you add 20 bookmarks at home and a different 20 at work between copies? You'd have to decide which 20 was more important so that you can overwrite the others.
I'm kind of opposed to native Firefox solutions on general principals, though. That doesn't work so well if you also want to use your bookmarks from IE at the office and Safari on your iPhone (disclaimer: I have neither - work with me here). Sites like del.icio.us are a much better idea, in my opinion, although I don't like the idea of giving up control over your own data.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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
I fully agree. While I have never used Google browser sync I have used Foxmarks for quite some time with no hassle at all.
Indeed, Google Browser Sync is itself a "poorly maintained 3rd party extension" at this point, so I don't know why that distinction was made between GBS and the other plug-ins that do the same thing.
E pluribus unum
"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.
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.
IMO, their bittorrent client sucked compared to uTorrent in 9.0 as well. I just reconfigured the .torrent filetype to use that app instead. I can't blame Opera for trying though; I think it's becoming as natural as having FTP support these days. It makes sense to me, and fills a niche, to support P2P by supporting the most common protocol as well. One could've hoped for a better client though.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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(); }
WTF? They're "pushing" it because that's what the grandparent post ASKED for! Read, motherfucker!