Is Bing’s New Toolbar a Social Blow to Google?

Bing’s toolbar has been the subject of controversy lately, with Google accusing it as being a tool to help Microsoft’s search engine to copy some of their search results. A real search engine marketing war of words – Bing strenuously denied this accusation, and have updated their toolbar with a Facebook feature that might set it ahead of its competitors.

Google seem to be looking to make amends for their sparse showing on the social scene, with rumours of Twitter takeovers and Groupon acquisitions being abound of late. Bing though, if their latest toolbar update is anything to go by, are looking to seize on Google’s social media dalliances and attract more social searchers to their services.

Bing has added a Facebook function to its toolbar (for Internet Explorer) that allows users to check their pictures and Facebook wall in an instant. An incredibly handy service for people who want to search and check their social features at the same time without having to switch tabs all the time.

Bing's new toolbar has Facebook functionality

Google’s social search still seems light years behind in comparison, even when they’re trying to make improvements to their search engine optimization services. For instance, they have recently updated their search results to include personalised results from users’ social networks, such as YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Quora. Facebook results are still tellingly absent.

Is it just a case that Google can’t get a grip on social media and are terribly out of touch? The solution seems obvious to Bing – a lot of people use Facebook and log into their accounts on a daily basis. So why not make the transition between search and social as seamless as possible? Google’s stance is understandable – Facebook represents something of a threat to their advertising income, so they need to tread carefully.

But the more search engines that take Bing’s open-arm stance, the more people will jump the good ship Google to sail on the social sea.