The search engine giant Ask Jeeves Inc. (www.ask.com) announced on March 16 the launch of its toolbar for the open-source Firefox browser. The toolbar, which provides easy access to Ask Jeeves search directly from the browser, as well as a variety of other features, including tools to make local searches faster, is available for free download through the Ask Jeeves at http://sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar/moz/index.html. In addition, the application allows users to add any page they are viewing to their MyJeeves service, which lets them save, organize and share web pages.
Ask Jeeves also offers a toolbar for Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, which remains the dominant browser in the market. Nevertheless, Firefox, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, has gained a considerable market share, and since the version 1.0 release last fall, Firefox has been downloaded nearly 27 million times.
