Why did Google develop an IE-only toolbar?

At first I thought Google should be working on a toolbar for Firefox, and then I thought that they could already be working on one. With their high-profile hirings of two major developers from the Mozilla Firefox development team it seemed like a possibility, along with the Google-fanboy dream of a Google branded browser. But one must delve deeper into the subject.

Why did Google develop an IE-only toolbar? Because IE is not very open and it’s tricky to develop addons for it (I know, I once tried to create one). They made sure that they could reach all Windows PCs with a high-quality product right from their labs. This doesn’t mean that they don’t care about Firefox, especially since they hired two lead Firefox developers, but they realize that there are many great Google extensions for Firefox already. There’s the Googlebar which has many of the features you would want from a Google toolbar, GooglePreview which inserts thumbnails of websites into search results, and the Google Pagerank extension that shows you a sites Pagerank in the corner of your browser. One day the may create an official Google toolbar for Firefox, but they have more pressing matters to deal with like staying ahead of their competitors and continuing to innovate.

Also, Google is the default search engine in the Firefox search bar. They don’t have to work hard for a large presence in the browser; they just need to keep being the best and improving their offerings.