Googlepedia
Encyclopedia
Googlepedia is a free software
extension
for the Web browsers Mozilla Firefox
and Google Chrome
that displays relevant articles from the free Web-based encyclopedia
, Wikipedia
, on Google search engine results page
s.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
extension
Extension (Mozilla)
]Add-ons are installable enhancements to the Mozilla Foundation's projects, and projects based on them. Add-ons allow the user to add or augment application features, use themes to their liking, and handle new types of content.-Extensions:...
for the Web browsers Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
that displays relevant articles from the free Web-based encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, on Google search engine results page
Search engine results page
A search engine results page , is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the Keywords have matched content within the page...
s.
Features
- Turns internal Wikipedia links into Google search links
- Uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky feature to find relevant articles
- Links images directly to their full-sized versions
- Removes Google AdWords
- Can be expanded to take the full width of the page
- Invokes the local language version of Wikipedia based on the Google language
- Remembers your searches and uses them to optimize your results
Problems
While it includes many features, the plugin has certain issues:- Searching: The Wiki article presented is the same page as would be returned by using Google's "I'm feeling lucky" limited within the Wikipedia website. Searches will typically show certain specific articles instead of the more useful disambiguation pages, sometimes even showing trivial articles in place of more substantial ones. (It may be possible to weight search results toward disambiguation pages by adding the term "disambiguation" to each search).
- Linking: Redlinks (Wikipedia links for which no article yet exists) link to the "edit" page, instead of the default Google search term. By default, anonymous article creation is not allowed.
- If a user is set to login by default into Wikipedia and the user has an alternative theme set in Wikipedia, the display of the Wikipedia section of the search does not render correctly.
- When searching for something which (usually unintentionally) results in a large Wikipedia page, the entire web browser may occasionally lock up while downloading the article.
- Speed: loading the Wikipedia page can slow down the loading of search page.