Is Google finally going to do something with their bookmarking tool, Google Bookmarks? It’s possible. In the latest builds of the Chromium project, the open source implementation of the Google Chrome web browser which is the testing ground for new features, a new and improved bookmark manager has been spotted which allows you to import your bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks service.
The new bookmark manager in the Chromium builds looks a lot more like what you would expect to see in a web browser today. Instead of the simplified interface currently found in Chrome, the Chromium bookmark manager lets you search for bookmarks, drag-and-drop them into folders, and even import and export them to and from HTML files.
However, the most interesting feature of the upcoming bookmarks manager is the new option to import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks. Although at the present time the browser presents this as an option to import from “Google Toolbar,” that’s somewhat misleading because the Google Toolbar doesn’t even need to be installed in order to import your saved bookmarks from the service. Unfortunately, the new bookmark manager in Chromium doesn’t sync up with the Google Bookmarks service automatically.
Google Bookmarks’ Potential
It seems to us that Google is sitting on a untapped goldmine with their Google Bookmarks service. This half-hearted attempt at organizing your favorites sites looks like a project that was stopped mid-way through its implementation. In order to save bookmarks using the service today, you can star items from the Google Toolbar (if installed), you can use a browser bookmarklet, you can manually add a link from the bookmarks homepage or through the iGoogle Gadget, or you can click the star next to items in your Web History. What you can’t do, however, is import bookmarks from an HTML file or browser, tag them, or share them with others.
But now that Google has a browser of their own, it only makes sense to tie together browser bookmarks and their bookmarking service. And surely they must realize that in order to get people to use Google Bookmarks instead of their current preferred service, Google must offer some compelling reasons to do so. By integrating Google Bookmarks deep within their browser itself and making them searchable through the familiar Google interface, they could offer a great reason to switch over to both their bookmarking service and their browser. If Google went the extra step and made their bookmarks sync between all the implementations of the Chrome browser, including the one they are preparing for Android, they could knock out competition from Opera, too, whose bookmark sync option is one of the browser’s killer features for mobile users.
Even better would be an option to sign in to the Chrome browser using a Google profile in order to access the bookmarks along with other the services from Google like Gmail, Reader, or their personalized homepage.
Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves since nothing of the sort has been announced or implemented yet, but we hope that we’re not the only ones thinking of all the possibilities that Chrome presents here.
Images courtesy of Google Operating System
