Announcing Zoho extensions for Google Chrome: Search with Google, View with Zoho and more

At Zoho we like Google Chrome quite a bit. It is a fast browser and it's handling of Javacript makes it a good fit for web applications that push the limits - and that's exactly what we do with our apps. So a few weeks ago, when a friend called to ask if Zoho would be interested to take part in the public launch of the Chrome Extensions, we were happy to join. In addition, it is worthwhile noting that almost 10% of our users get to Zoho with a Chrome browser - that's notable for a young browser. And that's growing quickly. While Firefox growth has kind of stabilized, Internet Explorer continues to loose ground and now is the second most-used browser.

So today we are releasing not one, but two Zoho extensions for Google Chrome.

Zoho Companion for Google Chrome

This Zoho extension for Google Chrome keeps you connected to Zoho regardless of the site you are in, and it also enhances your Google web searching experience by allowing you to quickly view documents, spreadsheets, presentation and PDFs you might come across in your searches. For example, in your Google searches you might come across a search result like this:

So you know that's an Excel file. But you either don't have Excel in your computer or simply don't want to go through the hassle of downloading the file and waiting for Excel to open it. When you install the Zoho Companion for Google Chrome, you can easily view this file using Zoho when you mouse over the link and click on view in Zoho:

That will open up that document/spreadsheet/presentation in Zoho, where you can more easily and quickly view it.

Beyond that, Zoho Companion for Google Chrome also allows you to quickly view using Zoho any local files you may have (not only the ones you find on the web), keep an eye on the documents other people share with you in Zoho Writer, Zoho  Sheet and Zoho Show, as well as displaying how many e-mails you have, regardless what page you are in.

Yeah... that's 925 unread e-mails for me... wish me luck!

The Zoho Notebook Companion for Google Chrome, as you'd expect, is specific to Zoho Notebook. It allows you to seamlessly browse the web and make clippings of the pages you visit and take notes. You can automatically take a screenshot of the page you are visiting, which is then automatically uploaded on the background to your Zoho Notebook account:

You can of course just grab part of the text of the page as well, or just jot down your random thoughts -directly to Zoho Notebook- with this addon:

This is just the first version that we developed in a short time to get them ready for the launch. You should see more functionality being included in them. And of course, if there's anything in particular that you'd like to see, please do let us know in the comments below. We'll take those into account. Keep in mind that currently not all Zoho applications support Chrome to the full extent that we want them to. We are working on that too!

We hope you'll like these two Google Chrome add-ons and invite you to try them. You can find them in the Google Chrome Extensions gallery. We of course want to thank the Google Chrome team for inviting us to be part of this launch and for their assistance in getting us up to speed and helping us with questions.

Rodrigo