The toolbar does not track personally identifiable surfing activities of the end user unless advanced features such as PageRank are specifically enabled by the user. Google Watch has raised concerns about Google Toolbar's possible threats to privacy, such as tracking of browsing patterns, automatic installation of updates without the user's knowledge, and a privacy policy that can be revised without notice. This feature does not exist for the mobile version. The desktop version of Google Toolbar shows the cached copy of any given search result, which was useful for slower Internet connections and benefitted by Google Web Accelerator until its discontinuation in 2008. Google said that the feature "adds useful links" and "none of the companies which received AutoLinks had paid for the service." For example, if it finds a book's ISBN on a webpage, it provides a link to Amazon's product page for the particular book.
Google Toolbar was criticized when the AutoLink feature was added to the toolbar because this new feature directed users to pre-selected commercial websites. Google Toolbar can also provide the geolocation data to third-party websites through the W3C Geolocation API. This location was used to optimize search results based on where the user was located. My Location was a geolocation service which uses the location of Wi-Fi access points to determine the toolbar user's location. In September 2011, Google announced that it would discontinue Sidewiki.
Web site owners could not control Sidewiki comments, and there was no way for a web site to opt out of Sidewiki however, Sidewiki was disabled on secure sites. Sidewiki is currently available for Internet Explorer and Firefox through Google Toolbar, the Google Chrome browser through an add-on, and for other browsers, like Safari, it was available as a bookmarklet. Google uses ranking algorithms to determine comment relevancy and usefulness using criteria such as users voting up and down a comment and past contributions. Google Sidewiki was launched on September 23, 2009, allowing users to make comments, which are visible to the public, on any web page. Google Toolbar is often distributed through product bundling with a primary download. It has tools such as AutoLink, AutoFill, Translation, spell checker common to all browsers, while pop-up blocker and word finder are restricted to Internet Explorer.
Users can log into their Gmail accounts and access their email, saved bookmarks, and web history. Google Toolbar resides above the browser's tab bar and provides a search box to carry out web searches.
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