As soon as Google launched Google Instant, reporters began wondering when the technology would make its way to toolbars. Now it has.
Google said late Tuesday that Google Instant now has made its way into the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer - taking aim at the toolbar Microsoft typically associates with its own search engine, Bing. Google also said that the toolbar will automatically personalize itself according to what functions the user uses most.
The toolbar functionality can be downloaded for Internet Explorer 8 and 9; it's already built into Chrome, of course. Note that this doesn't actually allow Instant previews of the new Web pages, although those features were added to Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile browsers in March. (Instant searches came to those two mobile browsers in late 2010.)
Google Instant, launched in Sept. 2010, executes mini-searches for terms as a user types each letter, bringing up results based on the most popular queries.
However, for the toolbar, the personalization feature might be more interesting.
"As you discover and use particular tools that help your browsing experience, like Share or Translate, they'll automatically appear on the toolbar, making your most relevant tools easy to access," Allen Huang wrote in a blog post. "This personalization is stored only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google unless your usage statistics are enabled."
Google also tweaked its privacy settings to better explain what features users could enable, and what, if any, personal information Google wishes in return. In a screenshot posted to its blog page, Google identified a button that allows a user to turn off features that send information.
For right now, the new Google toolbar is in English, but other languages will be supported over the next week.
