• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 11, 2005

By popular demand, Yahoo! late Wednesday released a beta version of its toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. The free download comes with most of the features that accompany Yahoo!'s toolbar for Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

"Especially since Firefox launched their Web browser late last year, the demand has been so strong for this development," Yahoo! spokeswoman Stephanie Ichinose said Thursday.

The toolbar is not the first Firefox extension tapped by Yahoo!, which released its Y!Q contextual search technology in Firefox last week. Yahoo! will allow users to create bookmarks and custom buttons, to search within an opened Web site, view past searches, and add a site's available RSS or Atom feed to My Yahoo!. The toolbar provides links into a range of Yahoo! services beyond Web search, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News.

The initial Firefox toolbar is specifically designed for Windows, and will not include Yahoo!'s spyware-fighting Anti-Spy tool, which was added into the Internet Explorer toolbar last year. A company spokeswoman said that Yahoo! plans to build Mac OS X and Linux versions and extend Anti-Spy to the Firefox toolbar in the near future.

Yahoo!'s search blog cautioned Thursday that the beta has some wrinkles that need smoothing. "Like any Firefox extension, it may cause your browser to misbehave in unexpected ways," reported Duke Fan, Yahoo! toolbar product manager.

Toolbars from companies such as Yahoo! enable users to go directly to particular services, such as e-mail or Web search, by simply clicking on an icon.

Amazon.com's A9 search unit also offers a toolbar for Firefox, an open source browser that is gaining in popularity as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Internet Explorer.

Yahoo! rival Google Inc. recently hired the lead engineer of the Firefox Web browser, Ben Goodger, leading many to speculate that the search leader will create its own version of Firefox to take on Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What's more, during a meeting with analysts Wednesday, Google co-founder Larry Page mentioned Firefox when asked about Google's Web browser involvement. Page then declined to discuss the matter further.

"The Yahoo! Toolbar Beta is just one of many Firefox goodies you can expect to see from us this year ... so stay tuned," stated Fan on Yahoo!'s search blog.