Posting from Mountain View today, where I'll be in and out of meetings with Google executives at their HQ here.

Google today upgraded its Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer with what I call lazy-bones features, but not in a pejorative way; they just make our lives easier. Download it here (Note: It's in U.S. English only so far).

The biggest cool factor here is easily that you no longer have to go to the Google Gadgets page to download widgets you want. Google has added Google Gadgets to the tool bar, giving users access to more dynamic widgets straight from their browser.

When you click on the icon, the gadget will pop down from the tool bar, regardless of what site you are on, and close when you are done with it.

This should also perk up the ears of programmers you wouldn't ordinarily expect to find more than basic use in an IE tool bar because they now have another avenue through which to distribute their widgets.

The tool bar also now boasts an AutoFill feature, which lets users fill out Web forms with a single click using address and contact information saved with the tool bar. Users can preview the filled-in form and maintain multiple profiles.

Moreover, Google has broken down the these-settings-are-solely-for-this-PC barrier. Now, bookmarks, custom buttons and other preferences from any Google Toolbar can be accessed from any PC instead of just the one they were set on. 

This means users who move between home and office or are installing the tool bar on a new computer can retrieve their settings just by signing in to their Google account.

Also, Google has created something of a notepad for the IE browser, adding Google Notebook as part of its tool bar to let users collect links, text and images. Notebook users will be able to access all of their current notebooks and even add to them using the 'Star' icon.

The final stop on the lazy-bones feature train includes a feature that suggests Web pages in the case of broken links, or mistyped queries.

The new tool bar is an example of how Google is looking to improve on Microsoft's seminal Web infrastructure, IE. It's as though Google is saying: "You may have gotten there first, but anything you can do, we can do better."

In short, IE may be the base platform, but Google is increasingly proving its worth as the utility on any browser, for any Web-based function.