---
title: "Google Releases Sidewiki and Adds to the Growing Trend of Conversation"
date: 2009-09-29
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2009/09/29/google-releases-sidewiki-and-adds-to-the-growing-trend-of-conversation/
---
# Google Releases Sidewiki and Adds to the Growing Trend of Conversation
After you install the [Google Toolbar with Sidewiki](https://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/index.html), look for the Sidewiki button on your Google toolbar (see image below). When you click it, it expands a sidepane for the page you're viewing. Then just add and publish a comment.

![Google's Sidewiki opens a pane on the right of a web page where you can add a comment](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/sidewiki-600x3711.png)

Google's Sidewiki only works in Firefox or Internet Explorer (not yet in Chrome). You can [read more about Google Sidewiki here](https://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/learnmore.html).

Google Sidewiki furthers the idea of the web as a conversation. "Conversation" is also the word on many people's minds in the tech comm field right now. [Gordon Mclean says](http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2009/09/27/thoughts-on-tcuk09/) if there was one word he wanted to focus on in his presentation at [Technical Communication UK](http://www.technicalcommunicationuk.com/), it was "conversation." Gordon writes,

> My presentation had a theme, a single word that I was focussing on, so throughout the first day, in all the sessions I attended, I was listening out for that word. ... The word I was looking for throughout the first day was “conversation”, and I was pleasantly surprised when I heard it crop up in the later sessions of the second day and I admit I was quite pleased when the closing speaker, [RJ Jacquez from Adobe](http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/) both mentioned my presentation and had a similar view to mine.