Following in the footsteps of Ask Jeeves and Yahoo, Google plans to release a new version of it's toolbar to support Firefox browsers.

Google software engineer Fritz Schneider announced a new version of the Google toolbar for Mozilla and Firefox browsers to be released this week, according to a recent post in the Mozilla Googlebar developers list.

This version will be compatible with Firefox 1.0+ on Win2000/XP, Mac OS X 10.2, and Linux 8.0+. The features are similar to the current Google toolbar for IE with the exception of the Popup Blocker and Auto-Fill which will not be included for now.

The Googlebar project was initially created to address the widespread desire in the Mozilla community for the Google toolbar to support Netscape 7, Mozilla, and Firefox web browsers. The Googlebar offers advanced search options as well as easy access to any of more than 25 specialized Google searches.