As if forcing its employees to come in to the office to work on the Internet, buying a startup a week, and changing its logo once a day for a month isn’t hip enough for Yahoo, the company has now gone and revealed exactly what it was up to these past few months. Ladies and gents, introducing the new Yahoo … toolbar? Oh dear.
“The browser is your window to the world, and it’s your way of navigating the things that you do daily. The Yahoo! Toolbar helps you get to what matters the most to you – faster and easier,” Yahoo’s senior product manager Umesh Joshi writes on the official Yahoo Search Tumblr. “Whether you want quick access to search, email, local weather, or world and financial news, the Toolbar gets you there, no matter where you are on the web. You can even check in on what your friends on social networks are doing with one simple click.”
Guess what, Yahoo? Lots of people already find those information with one click, and it’s called Googling – straight from their URL address bar.
If you must know, the new redesign for Y! Toolbar (seriously though: Why … toolbar?) will be available on Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. Users can click on icons for Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, weather, or bookmark and more to get relevant information from a drop down window. Chances are, if you own a Mac, use Chrome, or have installed widgets on your PC, this access won’t be anything new – but it’s an alternative resource for those who are still on Yahoo’s cheerleading team.
As it stands, the toolbar has a rating of two out of five stars on Firefox, so things can only go up from here… if this update actually affects anyone. After all, the primary reasons no one liked toolbars to begin with are the clunkiness, minimized browser space, and how it used to sneak its way onto our browsers with each download back in the 90s. Hopefully, Yahoo’s next product announcement will finally show off what it’s been up with to the recent acquisitions and mandatory office appearances. We want to believe in you, Yahoo, but you keep letting us down!
