subject: Bing Denies Copying RockMelt Browser Facebook Features [print this page] Bing Denies Copying RockMelt Browser Facebook Features
Microsoft's Bing Bar aims to complete the type of Facebook integration not witnessed given that the RockMelt browser from very last 12 months. The transfer underscores
Less than a month following Google accused Microsoft's Bing lookup engine of copying lookup outcomes, Bing revamped its toolbar with Facebook performance that duplicates a good deal what RockMelt does in its Net browser.
RockMelt launched its Google Chrome-based browser in November, offering a number of nifty features that allow end users entry their Facebook as well as other content from toolbars that bracket the browser window.
Facebook contacts show up along the left edge in the browser window soon after end users log into RockMelt via their Facebook e-mail and password. The right side of RockMelt incorporates buttons for accessing the Facebook News Feed, Facebook Profile, Twitter tweet stream and timeline.
Released Feb. 17, Bing Bar seven provides users of Microsoft Net Explorer 7 browser or later straightforward use of their Facebook news feed to find out posts from pals and update their standing.
Users might also comment on or Like a friend's publish right in the Bing Bar. Facebook friend requests, messages and notifications are also surfaced in the Bing Bar, which can be very much constant with what customers get from RockMelt, which signals concept notifications and other Facebook updates.
When eWEEK pointed out the similarities among RockMelt and Bing Bar 7's Facebook functionality, RockMelt Co-founder and CEO Eric Vishria agreed together with the comparison. While he failed to criticize Microsoft for hewing to the world's most popular social network, he did lapse right into a gentle boast.
"You're right; the Bing Bar genuinely does duplicate so much of what Rockmelt does," Vishria told Eweek. "And when we set out to produce the browser for that next decade, we fully expected other folks to duplicate of us, and we anticipate to determine a good deal far more of this as others tune into what modern-day World wide web end users want."
Vishria additional that RockMelt, Bing and the World wide web at significant is evolving to meet the way men and women are interacting with it right now, and social interactions are an integral part of that evolution. Facebook transpires to sit on the center of that change.
Bing agreed inside a statement to eWEEK, stressing that it did not duplicate RockMelt in looking to aggregate common issues men and women do on the web, from Facebook to e-mail and games:
"Toolbars have always been about bringing essential Net content material to consumers in an quickly accessible way, alongside lookup. The Bing Bar is no different. As we set out to construct it, we looked at what folks are doing online every day and included people things that may make the toolbar most useful for clients. We didn't copy an current support."
To that conclude, the brand new Bing Bar continues the company's integration with Facebook by delivering users with use of their Facebook material without whisking them absent from Bing to your social network. Bing in reality just augmented its Facebook Liked final results to annotate any Internet URLs, not only those shared by close friends.
It absolutely was a tacit acknowledgement that people do not want social lookup done through the search engines like google who lack organic social networks, that is the best way Google has approached the task thus far. Relatively, end users desire to access what they and their close friends are familiar with. That will be Facebook, which offers greater than 600 million users.
That brings up an fascinating query about Google. Although RockMelt and Bing huddle near to Facebook, does Google, which employed dozens of social software specialists in 2010, hold the chops to problem Facebook with no tapping into Facebook?
It can be unclear, but Google +1, the company's social application layer cake, appears to be the search engine's bid to perform just that, creating for an thrilling social showdown in 2011.
