The Internet has a brand-new place to get social with
Google , but for many of the millions of people already on
Facebook, the thought of keeping up with yet another network of friends may be too much to handle. If that sounds like you, you’re in luck – a developer has come up with a way to see your Facebook news feed on Google .
Crossrider, which markets itself as a cross-browser platform for other developers, released the extension, cleverly titled Google Facebook, earlier today. After downloading and installing it, a small Facebook tab appears at the top of the page, right beside the Google Home button. Clicking on it will display your Facebook news feed instead of your Google Stream. Just click on Home to go back. The extension even lets you update your Facebook status from withing Google .
Trying out the extension, we noticed that Google Facebook imports only your “Most Recent” feed from Facebook—there’s no option to get the more curated “Top News.” It’s also not an exact replica of that feed; in a side-by-side comparison, we noticed a few things (“like” notices, for example) that the extension missed. On top of that, it’s a little buggy (your Google Stream still shows up when you click the Facebook tab, just way down on the page). We were grateful, however, for the unmissable blue Facebook flag at the top of the feed, a good reminder for which network you’re looking at.
Crossrider says it took just one day for its developers to create the extension, which may explain some of the bugginess. It’s available now for both Firefox and Chrome, and the download page says Crossrider is working on a version for Microsoft Internet Explorer, but that built-in security issues prevented them from supporting that browser upon the initial release.
What the hell is Crossrider, exactly? Describing itself as a free, easy-to-use framework for developers, it’s a set of software tools intended to simplify the process of creating browser extensions. The idea is a developer creates an extension once, then Crossrider does the tedious work of making it compatible with multiple browsers. Previous applications of the tool include an
enhanced Google ” Like” button and a
tool that removes “annoying” image previews on Facebook.