Bing Trying New Search Bar & Header

During a lecture my professor asked how many students used Bing, out of a class of 26, I was the only one. Ironically while researching for Amazon’s upcoming store, I did use Bing and stumbled upon a new search bar.

It is big, clean and pulls in your profile picture from Facebook if you have connected the accounts. Here’s a screenshot:

Things to point out, no links to Maps, Shopping, News, MSN, Hotmail and a consolidated More. While this could simply be due to the beta test, I wouldn’t be surprised if only Maps and News make it to the actual release.

I pinged Michael Gillett of MyMicrosoftLife if he knew anything about the nav bar, he believes it’s a design test, I agree. It does look pretty clean.