Google added another feather to its cap in the form of Google Sidewiki, a Google Toolbar option that allows users to leave comments about webpages as the browse the net. This will enable surfers to share their opinion about a particular page with other users who have Google Sidewiki enabled. The World Wide Web, it turns, is all set become more democratic and vocal.

“Today, we’re launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.” -  The Official Google Blog

If you are ready to jump into this foray of participatory web, you would need the latest version of Google Toolbar and enable the ‘enhanced feature’ option. This would also effectively mean that the toolbar will send your browsing data back to Google. So if you are not comfortable with Google being able to track your movements, Sidewiki is not for you. If you are comfortable about being tracked (stalked), then you can move on and take Sidewiki for a spin.

If you visit a webpage with Sidewiki enabled, you will see a ‘note icon’ (pointed in the image below) which when clicked will expand to reveal the Sidewiki information available for that particular webpage.

Google Sidewiki

The Sidewiki entries will be displayed in their order of relevance instead of their order of freshness, and is based on a new algorithm that “promotes the most useful, high qualities entries.” In order to make the Sidewiki entries more insightful and informative, it will also display posts and other information related to that particular page.

Currently, Sidewiki is only available for Firefox and Internet Explorer but will soon be made available to Google Chrome users. It is quite ironic not to have Sidewiki for Chrome since both of them are owned by the big G.

Superficially it seems like Google is doing everything in its capacity to present users with more and more information – information that perhaps would help them take better decisions. I however have an unrelenting notion that Sidewiki could possibly be a target of spammers, a thought similar to the one that occurred when SearchWiki was launched. But I’m sure I can trust Google for having an effective spam control system in place!