Forum Moderators: open
Matt Cutts goes into detail how one can create a button to select a url and run a whois query on it, all without heavy coding. There's an autotype function that might bug people, and a bookmarking function that some people may not feel comfortable with, but probably others may find pretty helpful.
Probably the most important aspect of this toolbar is that it reinforces user stickiness by encouraging users to sign in with Google in order to access functions such as gmail or bookmarks. Keeping people on Google has always been an issue, as mindshare has imo been the traditional source of visitors. This toolbar appears to me as a kind of mortar to help keep the pieces together, like a software as service application or a virtual desktop- or at least that's the direction it seems to be taking.
It collects some info (why does every toolbar try to change your default home page and your default error page? - so annoying), but as it's opt in - its your choice to have a Google toolbar/account - I'm not too concerned about that aspect.
However - if you regularly login to several AdWords accounts its essentially useless.
I don't want to connect my bookmarks/GMail/start page to a corporate Google account. To access these features, I have to logout of the corporate account into my personal account - which them means I can't access any AdWords accounts as it automatically logs me into the new Google account.
I could leave multiple browsers open, each logged into its own Google account, but that would be a pain as I try to navigate between different browsers and tabs (I'm an Avant browser user).
Until Google finds a way to have a 'Google account manager' login where one can set permissions across multiple Google accounts (including analytics, adwords, adsense, gmail, etc), allow access to multiple Google accounts at the same time (one corporate, one personal) - etc - I don't see how anyone working for an advertising agency (or even anyone who logs into a business AdWords account) could ever embrace any of these features.
<edit> Never mind - found it. It's now part of the search system when you start typing a search term.
An email can only be associated with a single Google account. Therefore, if I have 6 MCCs, and I want to allow someone to access only two of them - I basically can't (at least if it's possible - no one at Google has been able to explain it to me).
Therefore, the 'permission' levels don't account for having someone access two different MCCs (google accounts) with one email address (which is the basis of a Google account).
Or, if I want two child MCCs to access yet another MCC, I can't link an MCC from two different places.
Note: The Google toolbar also breaks the 'tab' function of the MSN toolbar.
