Redmond, Washington — Competition is a real game of chance … and Google may already have an edge in the search engine toolbar application, but the launch of Bing’s new Bing Bar, a free browser toolbar designed to expose all the latest and greatest features of Redmond’s search engine with its Facebook connection may be offering Google some serious competition, which the company thinks can change the minds of toolbar haters.
Software colossus Microsoft has cooked up a new version of its Bing toolbar for IE7, IE8, and IE9 that includes Facebook integration, and as long as you are comfortable with it tracking your every move, and if the Facebook aspect intrigues you in particular, go grab it from toolbar.discoverbing.com/toolbar.
However, to enjoy this new sweetness, you will have to open up a little–well, a lot–to Bing’s toolbar, which gathers information about your computer and searches, as well as the addresses of the websites you visit. Who knows, it may even be silently judging you as well.
Bing Bar works with Internet Explorer 7 or later on PCs running Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP with Service Pack 3. Its key features include Facebook and email integration, as well as the ability to push breaking news, traffic, and weather information to you.
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“I know what you are saying to yourself–‘really, a tool bar?’” Bing Director Stefan Weitz jested in an interview last week. Weitz mused that when he had first heard the pitch about it, his first response had been “are we doing dial-up too?”
But Weitz was pleasantly amazed with the results of the new version of the software, and so were the testers who tested it out during the new version’s development. “People–when they saw what we built–even if they said they hated toolbars (myself being one of them) said ‘hey this is actually remarkably useful.’”
“Though the Facebook integration and other functions including maps, mail, translation, and rewards are somewhat useful, the Bing Bar is only available to users of Internet Explorer 7 or later running Windows 7, Vista, or XP, limiting its potential for adoption,” Inside Facebook noted.
In addition to being able to conduct a search, and use numerous Bing features that you probably never knew existed, the Bing Bar will now let you know when something new happens on Facebook, so that you do not have to keep checking the website while you browse other parts of the Web. Specifically, the toolbar will keep you posted on the following:
- News Feed: You have quick access to your news feed to see posts from your friends and to update your status. You can also comment on or Like a friend’s post right from the Bing Bar.
- Photos: With photos you get a great looking collage of your friend’s photos, making it easy to scan the pictures your friends are sharing.
- Friend Requests, Messages, and Alerts: The Bing Bar also provides a quick glimpse and easy access to friend requests, messages, and Facebook notifications.
Moreover, Facebook fans can now get quick status updates simply by clicking the Facebook icon on the Bing Bar. A dropdown window shows a flying snapshot of what your Facebook friends are up to.
What is rather interesting is that the Bing Bar also has alerts that offer a quick view into new e-mails or Facebook messages from one central place. You can “like” items in the Facebook window, and broadcast status updates and comments too. Bing Bar’s toolbar’s push capabilities are impressive. If you get a friend request, for example, it will appear as a pop-up notification.
The fun, according to Weitz, focused on fetching some of the same ideas from Bing–that has been extended to things like delivering more tasks front and center–and that users are now able to quickly obtain information from an extensive range of services without having to keep the extra tabs open, or save those pages to their favorites.
“Now, as you engross more and more in the browser, actually pulling in all the disparate data sources that you have or want to use–your mail, or your Facebook status, and all these things across the Web–ends up actually making more sense,” Weitz said.
Interestingly, as you surf, Bing Bar keep tracks of every move you make. Log onto you Gmail account, for instance, and a pop-up asks if you would like to add Gmail to the Bing Bar. (This feature supports Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail.) When you click “Yes,” the toolbar grabs your login credentials, and displays your email messages in a dropdown box. To read a message in a new window, click it. To write an email, click the Compose icon in the upper right corner of the Bing Bar email window.
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“Everyone always inquires us, ‘are you taking share from Google,’ or ‘are you taking share from Yahoo, or whoever else?’ And the answer is that you do not have to take share from anybody. You can actually grow the pie,” Weitz said.
If you are not so concerned by having a search engine monitor your every move, the Bing Bar has a lot to offer. Take a walk-through of the toolbar in the video below: