Google Toolbar to be Dumped! Joins Casualty List with Google Labs

Yesterday, I wrote on how Google is prioritising their focus on Google Plus by culling some not so popular or productive projects. Google Labs will soon be shutdown and it will be joined by Google Toolbar. What is surprising about this announcement, is that Google Toolbar has a few fans out there.

Google maintains that a lot of features are already provided within Firefox 5 which were included in Google Toolbar and hence it will stop support for Firefox 4 onward. This means new Firefox versions will not have Google Toolbar supported on it.

Strangely Google makes no mention of Internet Explorer users who also will be affected.

Google’s obvious Chrome pitch!

I think somewhere down the line, Google is betting on its own browser and probably expects people who used Google Toolbar to move over to Chrome instead and use the many extensions which makes having a toolbar irrelevant. Firefox is pushing new updates faster than ever but it is not really exciting the casual user.

This is a clear sign that Google is on a real clean-up drive to prioritize talent and time on Google Plus and other core products. I wonder which Google service is next up for culling? Will Orkut get dumped? In all probably sometime in the future. What are your views? Do drop in your comments.