As announced a few weeks ago, Mozilla is partnering with eBay International to develop the Firefox Companion for eBay extension. While not much details were provided in the press release it was easy to imagine it would be about an easy way to stay tuned to eBay items.

A public beta will be released tomorrow but I got early access via the alpha test program. So far it pretty much fulfills my expectations. I am currently selling and watching some items on eBay and the Companion provides a quick view of their progress. You can select to view items you are selling, that have already ended (sold and won), items you are currently watching and you are bidding on, where it proves to be the most useful.

You can also set how you want to be notified on new events with your choice of a simple item glow in the sidebar or a more effective alert box. The default configuration seems very reasonable to me with alerts for outbids and watched and bid items ending soon only.

Being one of phishers’ favorite web sites, eBay has also taken the opportunity to add another line of protection: enter your eBay or Paypal password and Companion will warn you when you enter it in any other web form with an option to report the site as a phisher through Google phishing reporting web site.

It may be very annoying at first if you share the same password for several web sites (which is a bad habit anyway), but at least it lets you whitelist them and avoid being prompted every time you access them.

The Companion is available in German, French and UK/US English only with more countries to come after, explains Mozilla’s Paul Kim. “US English is usable but not officially supported”, he added.

Despite a bumpy start due I believe to some extension conflict which I managed to solve creating a new profile, it looks like a keeper to me. Just like millions of users I love eBay and certainly appreciate any help on tracking items I’m selling and watching.

You can download and try it from Mozilla.org. Once you try it, you can provide feedback on your experience here.

Usefulness: 4/5 – Usability: 4/5 – Features: 4/5