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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software

Google Buddy brings searching to the menu bar

by Cory Bohon (RSS feed) on Jan 8th, 2008


Spotlight is great for searching your computer and networked Macs from the menu bar, but what if you want to search the internet also? Well, here comes Google Buddy, which allows you to search Google using the menu bar. There are multiple ways to search using Google Buddy:
  1. Simple Search - this presents a spotlight-esque menu item that allows you to search for any web page using Google
  2. Advanced Search - this allows you to use the advanced features that Google offers, such as searching using modifiers (all, exactly, any, none) or searching a specific site
  3. Image Search - just as the name hints, it allows you to search Google images
  4. Advanced Video Search - this allows you to search Google Video (however, since Google now owns YouTube, they should have included a YouTube search feature as well)
  5. Advanced News Search - allows you to search Google's News archive
  6. Special Searches - this feature allows you to search for movies, weather, links, and phone numbers
While using this application, the one disadvantage that I found was the auto-completion. While auto-completion is good, Google Buddy's auto-complete seemed to be "too-fast," so fast in fact that I ended up searching for wrong items. Luckily, there is an option in the preferences to turn this off ("Show search suggestions" check box). This looks like an excellent piece of software for the Mac, and it now has a permanent home in my menu bar! Google Buddy is available from Recurring Dream for the small price of $11.95; there is also a demo available.

Tags: Google, Google Buddy, GoogleBuddy, menu bar, MenuBar, Recurring Dream, RecurringDream, search

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