Google is killing Google Publisher Toolbar for AdSense in May 2020

Google has announced the end of its Google Publisher Toolbar, a niche Chrome extension that made it easy to view AdSense earnings in your browser. With Publisher Toolbar, AdSense users could get a quick glimpse of the latest stats for their AdSense account, including earnings for the day so far, monthly earnings, and a look at which sites were earning the most.

Google says that the Publisher Toolbar extension will be removed from the Chrome Web Store in May 2020, and after that point you won’t be able to see AdSense data through the extension in your browser.

AdSense is on a mission in 2020 to reduce complexity and provide an enhanced yet simplified set of tools to help you focus on creating great content. To help support this mission, the Google Publisher Toolbar will no longer be available for use from May 2020.

Beginning May 2020, the Toolbar will be removed from the Chrome Web Store. After this date, you’ll no longer be able to access your AdSense data through the Toolbar. Please note that this change won’t impact your AdSense account.

This is only the latest extraneous AdSense product to see the chopping block as Google simplifies its AdSense offerings. Last July, Google announced that it was sunsetting AdSense for Android and iOS. Google said at the time that it would be investing in “a common web application” in order to “deliver AdSense features optimized for mobile much faster.”

9to5Google’s Take

I’m pretty bummed to see this extension killed off. Having one-click access to an overview of AdSense earnings is really helpful for publishers and content creators, and this tool did the job well.

Google’s argument to kill off its mobile apps makes sense if they truly are going to build a better universal web app, but I can’t find a similar argument for this plugin.

Rather, this axing feels more like a typical case of a product that has found usefulness in a small, core group of power users, and Google apparently just can’t justify the maintenance of anything without mass appeal.