Google launches StumbleUpon like toolbar button

Well, now that it looks like StumbleUpon is worth something (possibly $40-45 million somethings), it should come as no surprise that Google wants in on the action.

That said, it's probably sheer coincidence that Google launched a recommendations button for Google Toolbar on the same day that news breaks that eBay is positioned to purchase StumbleUpon.

While both Google and StumbleUpon provide you with toolbar buttons that will take you to a wide variety of websites, they differ in how those sites are selected. StumbleUpon is a social network, so you visit sites rated highly by users with similar interests to your own. As you rate more and more sites, the odds increase that you'll only be sent to sites you like.

Google's new toolbar button (shaped like a pair of dice) takes you to a recommended page based on your search history. Google only promises up to 50 new sites per day, whereas you can stumble pretty much forever with StumbleUpon. To be honest, we weren't that impressed with the Google button's initial recommendations. Most of the selections were fairly obvious like Mozilla's Thunderbird homepage.

Google's also added a new recommendations feature for Google Personalized Homepage users. Click the "Add A Tab" button, type in "Recommendations" for the tab name, keeping the "I'm feeling lucky" box checked, and you'll get a page filled with recommendations updated every day.

Don't expect very much at the beginning, but the more you build up your search history, and the more you use these features, the better they'll become. Over time, we will give you more and better recommendations.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Tags: recommendations, search history, SearchHistory, stumbleupon