Search and Toolbars

HP and Microsoft announced a deal today to install the Microsoft Live Search toolbar on all 2009 PCs sold in the U.S. and Canada. In my previous role at Comcast, I launched the Comcast Toolbar, a browser based tool that includes a search box. People like to search where it's convenient, whether that is on their home page, from a toolbar, or in the built-in search box in IE7, Firefox, or Safari. Toolbars often have useful built-in features like links to e-mail, anti-spyware, and weather. Essentially the search engines give away toolbars in exchange for the future stream of search revenue. Many casual Internet users do not even know what toolbar they have installed or that it's even a separate downloadable application, but it makes a major difference to the search engines, for whom each point of market share is worth millions of dollars. It's also a good place for search engines to test new features to a portion of their audience without affecting the search experience for the general audience. Prior to working at Comcast, I was a big fan of the Yahoo! Toolbar, which includes anti-spyware, server-based bookmarks, and customizable buttons. Today it's hard not to have a toolbar, since they are often bundled with other downloadable applications like Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have one on your PC, I recommend downloading one and testing it out. Here are links to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's toolbars.