Should I install toolbars?

Should I install toolbars? No, in my opinion. There are many websites and programs that have toolbars you can install for your browser. I have seen a lot of toolbars from google, bing, coupon finders, and games. Why do you need the toolbar? What does it do? Most of the time whatever the toolbar can do you can do in the game, program, or on the website.

One thing you do need to be careful of when installing programs or creating accounts on websites, sometimes there is a checkbox that is automatically checked to install a toolbar. Sometimes the toolbar has nothing to do with the game or website you are using. For example if you are downloading a free game, they have to pay their employees somehow. They pay for them partially by charging companies and in return they will add their toolbar to the installer.

When you install toolbars on the browser they can slow it down. Maybe one toolbar you won’t notice anything. The issue is when there are many installed. In my opinion the browser should be used to browse the web. I don’t use any toolbars now that you can search Google/Bing directly from the url bar. I used to have the Google toolbar installed because I liked the quick access to Google without going to Google, not that it took that long.

Toolbars, besides search engine ones, don’t seem necessary to me. If I want to download a new game just go to the game site that you use. If I want to download or print coupons I would just go to the website where I have an account to get them. I think it would be better to turn on a toolbar built in, the favorites bar, and add the websites you need to use to the favorites bar for easy access.

Another issue with toolbars is that alot of them are not really for what you use them for. You may download a toolbar for accessing an online game, but the reason they want you to download and install it is so they can collect information from you and/or advertise. Many spyware programs actually see certain toolbars as spyware and during a scan will ask you to remove them.

The last point I will make is, they take up space. This may or may not really be an issue and I see it less now than in the past, but I have seen people have 5 or more toolbars installed and active and it takes up a lot of space at the top of the browser window. For me, the less I have to scroll through a webpage to read the content the better. Why would I want to take up that space with toolbars that are not necessary.

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