Download OptimizeGoogle version 0.77

August 12, 2009 | In: Downloads

Here you go, the first patched up release of the new OptimizeGoogle project (based on CustomizeGoogle). Note that this version also has all the changes made in 0.76.3 released a while back.

Change history: 2009-11-23 by Phoglenix

Bugfix: Now mostly works with new search result page. This is a stopgap solution, to be improved later.
Update: Compatibility with Firefox 3.7.*
Update: Links updated for alternate search sites.
Update: Set the following options to being active by default: remove click tracking, remove ads, anonymize Google cookie UID and don’t send cookies to Google Analytics.
Update: Multiple languages added.

Note: A known issue exists where the script runs on the current tab when another tab is (re)loaded. This will be fixed in a later version.

> INSTALL OptimizeGoogle <

(Download opens new page on Mozilla website)

Tags: bug

95 Responses to Download OptimizeGoogle version 0.77

Nick the Greek

August 11th, 2009 at 08:33

Thank you for all your efforts.
I think there is another issue with “our” plug-in:
Some times ( I don’t know exactly what triggers it) the images.google page keep refreshing (like in a loop) after a few streaming pages.
I heard others complain about this (also in the old CustomizeGoogle group) so I know it’s not a problem of my pc.

Keep up the good work

CGuser

August 12th, 2009 at 19:53

Thank you for making it work again!

It appears that “remove click tracking” option does not work on my Mac with Firefox 3.0.11. Essentially links still point to Google rewritten URL.

This feature works on Windows with Firefox 3.0.6.

Chris

August 12th, 2009 at 20:26

Great work, guys! Thanks so much!

city_zen

August 13th, 2009 at 08:08

Great! Thanks a lot for keeping this add-on alive!

Glen

August 13th, 2009 at 13:27

Nice work! Can you get it put up on Mozilla Addons? That way people can add it more easily. If you want I may be able to help you with it (you can email me)…

dicks

August 13th, 2009 at 14:07

The two versions were made by other developers. What I would like to do is take their input and create a new team of people to work on an OptimizeGoogle plugin for Firefox which would then go up on the Mozilla site. So, any programmer volenteers please contact me.

Glen

August 14th, 2009 at 03:27

I’ll volunteer, if I can be of help.

dicks

August 14th, 2009 at 09:31

Great, I will contact you directly. One or two people would be enough to keep this alive I think.

bachterman

August 14th, 2009 at 13:16

thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!
your work is very much appreciated.

pjdkrunkt

August 14th, 2009 at 15:46

One of the most powerful tools of Customize Google is the ability to try a search on different search sites. I’d love to see the option to edit the list of optional sites, or even better… pull sites from the search bar list. Between BING, Friendfinder and Wolfram Alpha, it seems like we are seeing a whole new generation of new search engines… it sure would be nice to have an up-to-date options list!

Richard

August 14th, 2009 at 17:06

Hello,

I just installed 76.2 and I am still having problems with the shopping function. I get all the google ads and there are no alternative search sites listed on top. I have firefox 3.5.2 on a mac with os 10.4.11

Also, how can I tell if the “Privacy” functions are working?

Or that it turns off click tracking. I am most concerned about the google cookie uid & not sending any cookies to google analytics.

Thank you for keeping this important ad-on working.

Richard.

dicks

August 14th, 2009 at 17:32

Re. search, have you enabled the option “Add links to other web search sites” in the options?

I just put up this website a few days ago. Next is to find two people to help with programming the add-on to an up to date state. Glen has already volenteered to help (yeah!) and so one more programming expert is required.

We will then compile all the comments and feature requests and plan. Initially I want to focus on patching up the bugs and Google incompatibilities. Then we’ll look at features.

Morac

August 15th, 2009 at 03:04

Seeing as how my fixed version ended up here, I suppose I could help. I probably won’t have a lot of free time to do so though since I already have a few other add-ons to maintain in addition to real life.

I’ll point out that the “Rewrite Image links works again” fix came from someone else. I just added it to my version when I made it.

Finally, it shouldn’t be too hard to merge this version and the 0.77 BETA 2 version together. That’s assuming the fixes in the 0.77 BETA 2 version still work. The problem with Customize Google is that it looks for very specific things in the results that Google returns. As such things break nearly any time Google changes their site.

dicks

August 15th, 2009 at 10:03

Would be great if you can help on an irregular basis. Glen is looking into merging 0.76.2 with 0.77b2. Once this is done we can check what works and what not.

Holiday

August 16th, 2009 at 08:40

Thanks for the efforts as this still addon is to good to let die.

Note: Alternative Google news and Google shopping links are still missing.

Glen

August 16th, 2009 at 19:05

Hey everyone
For future reference, could you please post bug reports to the google groups page ( http://groups.google.com/group/optimizegoogle)? It will make them easier to find later!

Danny

August 16th, 2009 at 20:10

Excellent and important work guys. As someone who has only dabbled in programming, I appreciate all of the work you guys do so much. Keep the dream alive!

dicks

August 16th, 2009 at 20:51

Thanks . A new version 0.76.3 is in the works. This is an “OptimizeGoogle” edition which mixes the 0.76.2 and 0.77 versions. After that we’ll look at bug fixes.

Chupacabra

August 16th, 2009 at 22:40

Thanks for keeping it alive.

Unfortunately one of my favourite functions (“Stream search result pages” in Google Images) broke down about two days ago (at least in Windows Firefox 3.5.2). Will you fix this in the near future?

DickS

August 16th, 2009 at 23:27

Yes, we will look at fixing this asap. Please bugtrack this in the Google group so we can keep track of it.

Freddy

August 17th, 2009 at 18:31

Thanks for the update, but I will suggest to add the version number to the xpi file for example: OptimizeGoogle 0.76.3.xpi

Morac

August 17th, 2009 at 18:57

Nice update. A minor suggestion though would be to pull in the current preferences from Customize Google if they are set.

DickS

August 17th, 2009 at 22:20

We might do this later but right now want to stay with the same name so we can enable auto-update. You can right click on the link and select “Save as…” and then rename and save, like with all Firefox add-on downloads.

DickS

August 17th, 2009 at 22:22

Morac, we plan to change the default settings anyway as in CustomizeGoogle none of the ad removal and privacy protection is activated by default. This should be in 0.76.4.

Chupacabra

August 17th, 2009 at 23:18

@DickS: The ”Stream search result pages” in Google Images I reported yesterday started to work again. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, I guess it’s not a local (browser, other scripts) problem, neither OptimizeGoogle’s problem, probably Google behaves strangely, changing the footer of the page from time to time.

And another thing, the “Rewrite links to point straight to the images” function is dead for a long time. I’m using a Greasemonkey script to fix this: Google Image Relinker Mod (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5059), of course it would be faster and more comfortable to use one script instead the two. The script is really small and simple, you could easily integrate into your add-on and make this function work again.

Uzer

August 18th, 2009 at 09:22

Thanks so much for taking time to maintain this addon. Ever since it broke down I’ve been using the greasemonkey script GoogleFx http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/31950

It’s pretty good although I prefer Customizegoogle. But there are some features from Googlefx that I really like and have gotten used to, such as the mouseover zoom feature and search/filter by similar site or pictures in Google Images. Is there any way you can add these features to Optimize Google? Maybe you can combine the best features from this script to the addon.

DickS

August 18th, 2009 at 09:39

Sure, please use the Google Groups link to post feature requests and bugs. We can’t keep track of them in all the comments .

DickS

August 18th, 2009 at 09:40

Hmf, perhaps OptimizeGoogle is self healing and auto learning . Great news – seems Google made changes again, this time for the good.

Corny

August 18th, 2009 at 12:07

Hallo to all

i use Firefox 3.5.2, the version of OptimizeGoogle 0.76.3 did not work.
The Advertise will shown on the right site of google search, the funktion ‘stream search result page’ do not work from its self. If i switch the google search to picture and than back to the main page, the ‘stream search result page’ work, thats confusing.

DickS

August 18th, 2009 at 12:50

Known issue. Please submit bugs in the Google Groups link at the left. Bugs posted here will not be processed.

great

August 18th, 2009 at 23:03

Thanks
I was really waiting for a CGoogle version that would work with FF 3.5!

DickS

August 18th, 2009 at 23:24

OptimizeGoogle 0.76.3 works with Firefox 3.5 – or what is the issue?

Transcontinental

August 20th, 2009 at 09:53

This OptimizeGoogle version 0.76.3 now works perfectly here. A real pleasure to recover all the advantages of CustomizeGoogle, and to recover them on Firefox 3.5.2. Streaming results in either Web or Image search are flawless, and rewritten links to point straight to the images are efficient (these were the two major problems encountered with latest Google Search modifications not handled correctly by CustomizeGoogle).
Congratulations, very nice work. Do keep this extension alive and dynamic!

DickS

August 20th, 2009 at 10:15

Thanks for the compliment. This is just the beginning, we plan to fix a few further minor issues and then get this up on the Mozilla add-on site for everyone to enjoy.

John

August 21st, 2009 at 12:06

Nice!!!
Keep up the good work.

btw
Remove Ads in image search not working

relegated

August 23rd, 2009 at 07:31

Thanks for taking up this project. One request, would you be able to add force HTTPS for Google Notebook? I know Google stopped development on Notebook but I still use it and would be nice to have it go over SSL.

bege

August 23rd, 2009 at 20:51

The standard url for the German Google site is http://www.google.de/webhp? or
http://www.google.com/intl/de/webhp?
Only if I manually change the url to http://www.google.de/search? or http://www.google.com/intl/de/search? the counter and stream functionality work. Or with the advanced search, but there, of course, the other OptimizeGoogle preferences are being overwritten.

iamnu

August 24th, 2009 at 19:40

Thanks for taking over the original CustomizeGoogle. We all appreciate your efforts. Keep up the good work. Thanks again…

Galen

August 25th, 2009 at 17:34

I too am not seeing links to alternate shopping sites.

GrailKnight

August 28th, 2009 at 00:28

Just wanted to say thank you for keeping the old Customize Google extension alive.

Keep up the good work.

Chuffed

August 29th, 2009 at 18:32

Many thanks to optimizegoogle.com. and I wish you much success!
This works great for me in Ffx 3.5.2

nono

August 30th, 2009 at 02:59

Great work and very much apprechiated that you keep this addon alive.

I was wondering when the filter function will work again?
Or am i doing something wrong? I have a huge list of sites already imported but nothing happens to my search results (“enable filter” is active). im also missing the little link next to the search results to add new a site to the filters.

For me that was/is the most important feature.
I am on a Mac Firefox 3.5.2 in case it matters.
thx

John

August 30th, 2009 at 20:56

Nice work! Btw, it is currently not working properly with Google`s Searchwiki feature.

Greg

August 31st, 2009 at 16:13

Nice to see the abandoned Customize Google get a makeover from you.

Thanks for deciding to support this all so important extension that pretty much tames well enhancing Google.

Thanks.

fred

September 1st, 2009 at 16:50

Here it seems not to work.
First I thought it was because of the firefox version (3.5.2) but I discovered that it is not.
If you make a normal search in google it doesn’t work,but if you use the old search url, it works fine.

search url today: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=pool&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=f41ce7c9cfa5087b
old search url: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pool

hope this helps someone.

benny profane

September 1st, 2009 at 17:16

Great job! Thanks a lot!

I was wondering: Customizegoogle used to work with all the other Google TLDs (google.de, google.fr, google.es…)
Do you think there is a chance to get optimizegoogle to do the same thing? I can get roughly the same results by changing the “hl” parameter in the URL string, but it would definitely help non-american users if we could directly access to OG options from our local search engines!

Thanks in advance!

September 2nd, 2009 at 19:42

How can we know if the privacy tools are working? “Add links to other web search sites” is definitely not working (Vista and XP).

Thanks

Avesi

September 3rd, 2009 at 23:36

In WEB:
“Add links to other web search sites” doesn’t work.

Glen

September 6th, 2009 at 04:39

Thanks for the support, everyone!
Sorry your comments weren’t posted for the last few days, I had a mix-up about checking them.

Anyway, it seems many problems stem from using the new form of search URL rather than the old one, as pointed out by fred.
We hope to get this working soon for both forms but in the mean time try using the firefox search box, as I believe this still uses the old form of the URL. This should get filters, alternate web search sites, web search streaming, and maybe even some ad-blocking working.

If you have bugs to report or features to request, it would be really helpful if you use the Google group to report them – it’s easier to reply and track bugs there! The link is in the sidebar.

nane

September 6th, 2009 at 19:03

OptimizeGoogle 0.76.3 does not work for new URL:

(do not work): http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&source=hp&q=pool&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=f41ce7c9cfa5087b
(work): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pool

viktor

September 9th, 2009 at 14:28

any chance of porting this to Chrome?
thnx

Game

September 9th, 2009 at 16:38

Have you Plan to make a multilanuage version?

Glen

September 9th, 2009 at 17:13

viktor, I don’t think this will be ported to Chrome any time soon. At the moment we are just working on getting it all going again, but it is also possible that Google will not appreciate it meddling with their sites. Could happen in the future, I guess.

Game, at the moment it is just English but yes, multi-language versions would be great! We will need contributions from native speakers of other languages to translate it once it has reached a more solid, working state. We’ll let people know!

atomMan

September 14th, 2009 at 11:27

Glen (and any other OG dev’s), thanks for taking up the slack on this project. much appreciated!

matieu

September 15th, 2009 at 12:25

Thanks for keeping this extension alive

Mark Cramer

September 15th, 2009 at 22:52

We’d like to see if we could be of assistance. If the person in charge of Optimize Google wouldn’t mind contacting me I’d appreciate it. CustomizeGoogle was one of our original inspirations for creating an add-on in the first place, so it’d be nice to see if we could lend a hand. Thank you!

DickS

September 16th, 2009 at 07:26

Thanks for reaching out. Would be great to get you on board, will contact you via email directly.

kustodian

September 16th, 2009 at 10:33

Thank you for continuing support to this great extension.

Is there a chance to put this on addons.mozilla.org?

DickS

September 16th, 2009 at 11:02

We will as soon as the next version is ready with a general clean up. Some functions have stopped working and we want to fix them first before re-publishing on addons.mozilla.org. But you will see it appear there eventually .

Christian

September 16th, 2009 at 23:13

Since CustomizeGoogle and OptimizeGoogle do not operate properly anymore I hate to use Google. Ugly and overcrowded with ads. No filtering of netzwelt.de and chip.de search sites (they drive me nuts, their “results” are stupid most of the time) anymore. Please, please bring it back!

(Now that its gone, I realized how essentially it has been for me…

September 23rd, 2009 at 05:46

Google’s webhp(non redirected search) is not working for streaming and most features.
Try it on:
http://www.google.com/webhp?ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=a

This is probably caused by google’s new use of # as a separator which causes things to not be passed in a normal way…

Voltair

September 23rd, 2009 at 13:43

In images.google sometimes (a lot) the page keeps autorefreshing (like in a loop).

I have seen many reports in custumizegoogle also.

Any chance for a fix???

It is really annoying. It has something to do withe the streaming results routine.

Glen

September 26th, 2009 at 14:32

Voltair, we are working to fix that for the next version!

Voltair

September 26th, 2009 at 23:20

Thank you Glen!!
Keep up the Great work you are doing!

geeknik

September 28th, 2009 at 03:15

Doesn’t work with 3.7a1pre. Please update your extension to be future proof. Thanks.

George

September 28th, 2009 at 11:49

Your work, time, effort (etc…..) deserve it. Really.

Thanks you very much for making this extension live again.

MmmM

October 7th, 2009 at 19:30

In images.google sometimes (a lot) the page keeps autorefreshing (like in a loop).

— something like that happens to me as well…
though it only seems to be when i open up google the first time…
(http://www.google.com/webhp is my homepage and the refresh occurs when it loads on fx startup… )

can’t say that it has anything to do with streaming results… one, i have optiG set to turn that off… and, considering i haven’t done a search yet… there are no results…

probably just google attempting to disaffect such as optiG…

MmmM

October 7th, 2009 at 19:33

another thing…

a while ago… the redirection to the images stopped working…

but, a while after that… the next time i went to google images…
redirection was working…

(for the most part… there were a few times when the ‘proper’ google image link would open… )

Anton

October 7th, 2009 at 23:18

Is the filter working? I want to exclude all results from experts-exchange, but they still come through…

jon

October 8th, 2009 at 16:36

add bing… PLEASE

and msn search… PLEASE

and baidu….

expecting

October 26th, 2009 at 02:11

Fabulous idea to revive the much needed CustomizeGoogle. But:

Tried OptimizeGoogle today for the first time, and significant elements of it didn’t seem to work – the results page had ads, the results weren’t numbered, there were no links to other search engines, etc. On the other hand, image search results worked as expected. This was the case both when CustomizeGoogle was disabled and when both addons were enabled. Since CustomizeGoogle modified the standard results page just fine, I’m back to that now and keep OptimizeGoogle on the backburner for the time being until I can be sure it’s an adequate replacement for CustomizeGoogle.

Suggestions:

-More transparency and documentation. Clearly state what isn’t working anymore in CustomizeGoogle and what the status is of resurrecting the respective options. (More) Clearly state what you’re changing, dropping, and adding. And make sure it *is* working (see above, why use OG when it obviously fails where CG is working… makes it look like just some hack job…).

-Include obvious improvements that don’t take much to do, e.g. revamping the list of optional search engine links at the top. Not every one of them is still working properly. The fact that Bing is still included as “Live” is not a sign for much care for details. Those extra search engines should be optionally customizable anyway.

David

October 26th, 2009 at 04:16

This is a fantastic addon! But how do we make the position counter work? I’ve checked the box and restarted firefox, but it still doesn’t work when I search Google. Appreciate any help. Thanks.

DickS

October 26th, 2009 at 08:29

Yes, we are aware and are working on a fixed version. Note that OG is only a very minor patched version of CG.

ersilio

October 31st, 2009 at 00:41

everything is ok but does not remove the ads from Gmail. thank you

DickS

November 8th, 2009 at 19:53

Install AdBlock Plus instead – we will remove the ad blocking anyway in the next release. AdBlock does a much better job at blocking ads anyway.

Gringo Guy

November 17th, 2009 at 11:36

I was looking for a good way to strip click tracking from search results tonight… found the orig CG, then realized how out of date it was, including broken click tracking. However the ad blocking and filtering was working nicely, and the fave icons are kinda cool.

Finally figured out a fix for the click tracking: I also use the “google Enhanced BLACK” Greasemonkey user script, and just added a few lines to it. No more tracking. Perfectamundo.

Then after all that, finally found this site. But, as other have noted, filtering is broken, and still no “click track” blocking with OG.

So, please keep this project alive! This fills a big need, even if that’s not well recognized yet. But more people are starting to see that Augmented Browsing will become a really big deal.

One more request: Please add support for a native jQuery. I’ll keep checking back.

BTW, here’s how I fixed click tracking. I mentioned this works with Greasemonkey scripts. Ciao.

var arLinks = document.getElementsByTagName(“a”);
for (var i = 0; i < arLinks.length; i++ ) {
var elmLink = arLinks[i];
if ( elmLink.getAttribute("class") == "l" ) {
elmLink.removeAttribute('onmousedown');
}
}

lars

November 29th, 2009 at 11:57

is there a possibility to donate?

DickS

November 30th, 2009 at 10:29

Yes, we have setup a PayPal account you can donate to. It is: donate @ optimizegoogle.com (remove the spaces).

Steve

December 8th, 2009 at 18:42

latest release does not install on 3.6b4

DickS

December 8th, 2009 at 23:59

How strange, the release is set to work up to 3.7

December 11th, 2009 at 05:14

Thank you for reviving this great extension!

Tampa

December 30th, 2009 at 00:01

Not able to install OG on 3.6b5.

bob

January 5th, 2010 at 21:57

Does not hold google preferences anymore.
3.0.16

Jake

January 13th, 2010 at 00:21

Same here: I would love to see a plugin for Bing so I can exclude experts-exchange!!

MikeM

January 22nd, 2010 at 00:02

Just updated to Firefox 3.6. CustomizeGoogle broke but successfully installed OptimizeGoogle. Unfortunately, both streaming results and numbering work only sporatically. Thanks for your work….

DickS

January 22nd, 2010 at 09:24

Yes, this is a known issue and it is being worked on. We plan to add several fixes to the next release. Thank you for your patience.

Alex

February 9th, 2010 at 23:27

SUGGESTION / QUESTION:

A lot of us use gmail but even with OptimizeGoogle are still being tracked since we’re logged into gmail when searching.

Is there any way we can use gmail BUT not be “logged in” when searching on Google?

Many thanks guys!

Tommy

March 2nd, 2010 at 08:17

I would really like to see you implement the “Display the Date a Web Page Was Published in Search Results” function in your add-on.

See details:
http://lifehacker.com/5239562/display-the-date-a-web-page-was-published-in-search-results

BITS

April 28th, 2010 at 13:44

Does anyone have any more info about the numbered Google results / add position counter? Do we know in which cases it works?

Alternatively, suggestions for another solution (for numbering results) would be very much appreciated

Thanks for your hard work on this project

BITS

April 29th, 2010 at 12:15

Seems to me that if I search normally in Google it doesn’t number the results but if I use the search engine widget in Firefox it works fine.

(Top right drop down that can be used to search Wikipedia, Google, Ebay etc.)

HTH someone

Keith

April 29th, 2010 at 14:31

I think development of this add-on has stopped, but the “remove-adds” feature for gmail doesn’t work at all. This is really annoying, because the original CustomizeGoogle plugin worked great.

DickS

April 30th, 2010 at 09:08

Not really, 0.78 is coming.