Google has started implementing their ridiculous Google sidebar or sidewiki…it’s such a pain in the ass and useless! At first I would just clear my cookies and then go to Google again and it would be gone…then that stopped working!

Here’s how you remove it…Right Click on your Google Toolbar, go to Show Buttons, then click SideWiki, refresh your page and it should be gone. But then I saw it on the tool bar, so if you right click again on the Google Toolbar =>> Click Google Toolbar Options =>> Tools =>> Uncheck Sidewiki

So many people complain about this useless screenhog, I’m not sure why Google implemented it. I think they were trying to get people to click on the links that are normally at the top more…that’s all the sidewiki has…the same links that are already at the top left of Google.

I just found a post on TweakGuides.com that removes the Google Everything Bar, this is for Firefox, Chrome and Opera…there wasn’t one for Internet Explorer but if you’re still using IE, it serves you right!
I did it on my machine for Firefox and it works fine!
Firefox

To remove the Google Everything Bar in Firefox, you will need to edit a UserContent.css file to add customized code. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the following folder in Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\[Username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[randomstring.default]\chrome\; or in Windows Vista or Windows 7: \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[randomstring.default]\chrome\

2. Rename the existing UserContent-example.css file to UserContent.css, or create a new text document with that name.

3. Open the file with Notepad or any text editor.

4. At the bottom of the file, copy and paste the following text into the document exactly as shown:

/* Remove Google Everything Bar*/
div#leftnav { display: none !important; }
#center_col { margin-left: 0px !important; }

5. Save the document and close it.

Close all instances of Firefox and then restart it, and when you next launch a Google search, on the search results page you should see the familiar (old) appearance for search results. To undo this change, simply follow steps 1 – 3 above but this time delete the text above and save the document, then close and restart Firefox. Note that the full details of how to add custom CSS code to Firefox are on this page of the Firefox Tweak Guide, including samples of other useful codes.

Google Chrome

To remove the Google Everything Bar in Google’s own Chrome browser, unfortunately you cannot simply edit a user-based CSS file as in Firefox, so the best way to accommodate customization to the appearance of web pages is with the free Stylist Extension. Install Stylist, and then follow these steps:

1. Click the spanner icon at the top right of Chrome and select Extensions.

2. Click the Options button next to the ‘Chrome Stylist’ extension and select the Styles tab.

3. Click the ‘Add new style’ button, then in the box presented with the greyed ‘Stylesheet text’ prompt, copy and paste the following text:

div#leftnav { display: none !important; }
#center_col { margin-left: 0px !important; }

4. Tick the ‘All site’ box, enter a name in the ‘Style Name’ box (e.g. Remove Everything Bar), then click the Save button at the bottom of the box.

There is no need to close or restart Chrome, the change will be implemented immediately. If at any time you want to disable or remove this change, follow steps 1 – 2 above then click the box with the name of this style, and either click the Disable button to stop it, or click the Del button to remove it altogether.

Opera

To remove the Google Everything Bar in Opera, you will need to create a custom CSS file which Opera can then force Google to use when loading in your browser instead of its default one. Follow these steps:

1. In Windows Explorer create a new text file by right-clicking in an empty area under a directory and select ‘New>Text Document’. Open this document and copy and paste the following text into it:

div#leftnav { display: none !important; }
#center_col { margin-left: 0px !important; }

2. Save this document and rename it to google.css.

3. Copy this file to the \Program Files (x86)\Opera\styles\ directory – note the (x86) part of the directory name doesn’t exist on 32-bit versions of Windows.

4. Open Opera and browse to the main Google Search page, then right-click in an empty area of the page and select ‘Edit Site Preferences’.

5. Select the Display tab and at the bottom of the dialog box click the Choose button, navigate to and select your custom google.css file, then click OK.

You do not need to close and restart Opera; the change will be implemented immediately when you refresh the page. To undo this change you can either delete the google.css file, or follow steps 1 – 5 this time removing google.css from the end of the file path under the Display tab.

Note: Using the methods above has been confirmed to cause the folder list on the left side of Yahoo Mail Classic to disappear. You can resolve this by switching to the new Yahoo Mail view.

Anyway…good luck!