Eric Kerr

While the usage and importance of controlling a user’s startpage has declined recently due to search access within the browser, most of the services I use on a regular basis on the web are available within iGoogle (gMail, Reader, Weather, Calendar, etc.). Conveniently, Google also happened to have by far the best search engine, so I never fully abandoned searching from my start page instead of typing a query into FireFox or Chrome.

Bing is the first worthy adversary to the mighty Google search dynasty – removing any visual display bias, blind tests show that people think its results are just as good as Google. However, as long as I use GMail for my email, Google Reader for RSS, and Google Calendar for my activities, I couldn’t justify switching my homepage to Bing (or MSN). If all I needed out of iGoogle was the modules (and page load speed – sorry NetVibes), then I would consider using Bing as my default search engine.

So that’s what I did – gBing is a FireFox plugin I created which allows you to search Bing through iGoogle or Google.com. You can continue using iGoogle just as you normally would, but the form gets directed to Bing’s search results. Pretty simple. If your data is attached to Google’s other products but you want to use Bing for your searches, this is for you. Now you really can Google It With Bing. Download it Here.