Take one last look at Google Toolbar, which is now dead

Enlarge / The Google Toolbar website was running until about a week ago.

Up until sometime this past week, deep in the bowels of Google headquarters, a dusty, forgotten server still whirred along. “Take the best of Google everywhere on the web!” it would shout to any poor soul who wandered by the darkened closet. “Google Toolbar is faster, sleeker and more personalized than ever before!”

Wait, what?

Google’s launch-day Google Toolbar screenshot. It’s been a while. (credit: Google)

December 11 marked the birthday of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, which Google inexplicably left running nearly 21 years. We say “nearly” because we had this hands-on birthday post written ahead of time, asking, “How is this project still running?”, but someone at Google was apparently on the same wavelength. We gave the website one last check before publishing and discovered Google Toolbar is dead. Google shut down the website sometime in the past week, just before its birthday. RIP.