Yesterday Google Labs quietly released two new Firefox extensions: Google Safe Browsing and Blogger Web Comments. Today, there seems to be a lot of talk about them coming up with a specialized music search. Marissa Mayer said they are not building their own music store, just trying to get people to iTunes and other stores (and earn a cut of affiliate revenue, of course see update at bottom).

One thing that drives me batty about some news sites and blogs is when they don’t link to the site/service/product they are talking about (CNET, see above). Please, if you write about something, always link to it for readers. Making them run to Google is not helpful. With that said, here’s how you actually check out the new Google Music. Just do a search for an artist like, well, say Iron Maiden via Google Music search. The word musicsearch? is a new special query after google.com.

Google Safe Browsing
An anti-phising tool that will alert you to sites that are bogus asking for personal or financial details.

Blogger Web Comments
“… makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you’re viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it, all without leaving the page you’re on.” A little blue window pops up in the lower right of the browser. Check it out below:

When you click on the “leave comments” a window pops up to post to your blogger account. Once you login, it really is like leaving a comment — only you are leaving a comment on your blogger-based blog, not on the blog itself. I also noticed that the information being shown is coming from Google’s own blogsearch, which still is an incomplete listing of our blogs. They seem to be improving, however, and I’m not seeing as many splogs (spam blogs) as I’ve seen in the past.

Google Rumors
Lastly, there’s a Google rumor circulating (big surprise, huh?) that Google might buy the Opera browser. I don’t have any idea if that’s true, but if there is any truth to it, it does seem odd considering they are promoting and paying for Firefox downloads via Adsense. However, Opera has a good foothold in the mobile market and a great reputation among its users which makes them attractive. My personal opinion? Google won’t buy any browsers, they’ll either go the Flock route and do some sort of quasi-Mozialla browser or stay out of the browser market altogether waiting for the next big thing (browserless surfing?). After all, they make more money powering the search then wasting resources and manpower trying to compete with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Update 7:12pm PST: Hunter in the comments area (thanks) just pointed to a CNN article where a Google is reported as saying they are making no affiliate revenue. I’m not sure I buy this one, but for now will take it at face value. Think about the revenue possibility for directing millions of people directly to online music stores and Google wants none of that pie? Perhaps not a true affiliate agreement but there has to be some money changing hands here. If not now, then wait until the day revenues take a cut and this line of thinking gets changed.

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