However, if you are already trapped in Google’s ecosystem, then this little extension could be a good addition. In this post we will review Save to Google and see if it could replace your current bookmark manager.
Quick Overview
Save to Google lets you save websites and Google images to a web portal where they are organized using tags and can be easily searched using a powerful search option. All the saved websites can be viewed at google.com/save from any device or browser. This is what this extension can do for the most part; you will not find any advanced features like extracting text from articles, offline viewing, ability to choose which content to save, or apps integration.
Saving Websites and Google Images with Save To Google
When Save to Google is added, it will add a button next to the address bar along with other extension buttons. You can click this button on any webpage to save it to Google for later viewing. It doesn’t add any button in the context menu (right-click menu), so the address bar button is your only hope.
When you click on the extension button it will let you select a picture to easily remember the web page and also add tags to easily find it later. You can click on the arrows below the picture to view all the pictures available on the page and choose the right one. If you would like to add a tag, just click on the “Add a tag” button and enter the tag name, or you can also choose from an already created tag suggested below the text box.
One thing I really disliked about Save to Google is that it doesn’t give any clue that the page has been saved (as far as I can see). Whenever I saved a webpage, I had a really doubtful and unsatisfying feeling that the page has not been saved. This forced me to check all of my saved pages whenever I saved a new page to ensure it was saved. Normally, similar tools either change the color of the button or give a “Saved” sign to confirm that the page has been saved. You can go through the same process to save images from Google Images. Just click on any image in Google Images and then click on the Save to Google button. Google will provide the options to give tags and save the image URL.
Accessing All the Saved Web Pages
Now that you know how to save a web page, let’s see how you can view all the web pages and easily access the one you need. You can go to google.com/save or click on the “View Saves” button while saving a web page to view all of your saved content.
By default, you will see all your saved pages from all the tags on the main page. You can click on the “Tags” button on the left side to see all the tags you have created. Clicking a tag opens up all the articles saved under it.
When you click on a web page, it will open more details and editing options below it. To directly access the web page, you will have to click on the link at the end of each web page. The editing options allow you to edit both name and description of the web page. Furthermore, you can also edit tags to add or remove tags or simply delete the saved web page.
The search feature is also very good. In my experimenting I found that Google searches in the web page title, author name and all the content of the web page is similar to what Pocket’s search can do.
Conclusion
Save to Google is a really simple extension for saving web pages for later viewing. If you want something really simple without any bells and whistles, then give Save to Google a try. I will also say that it would be great if Save to Google would let us import our Chrome bookmarks to keep everything in one place and synced. But I guess we will have to stick with Chrome’s data sync option to sync Chrome data. Do comment below and let us know what you think about Google’s latest extension to poke Pocket.
