Google Operating System has a very interesting post on the Google Toolbar back in 2001. Apparently there was a beta version that included a smiley-face and a frowning-face which were clickable for every site you visit. Anyone who uses Google Analytics will likely recognize this smiley-face method of voting (for features)…but those who use the great service StumbleUpon should also see the similarities with the Thumbs-Up and Thumbs-Down buttons.

It seems Google never really did anything with this feature (it may have just helped them identify Spam sites), but it’s interesting that it’s still an option in the Google Toolbar for IE but isn’t in the new one for Firefox.

Could this be a situation where Google had the technology in place but lacked the foresight to see the usefulness of it? StumbleUpon and to an extent Digg use very similar methods as the basis for their sites and have grown to huge proportions thanks to the simple vote-up or vote-down feature alone.

Google Operating System notes that Google could bring it back to use with Personalized Search, but it could have been so much bigger had they just pushed it 5 years ago.

Of course hindsight, as always, is 20-20.