New GoogleBar UI to Replace Old UI

[pamela (Google employee)]

Several months ago, we announced the improved GoogleBar on the Geo
Developers blog:
http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/03/changes-to-googlebar.html

The GoogleBar changes included a cleaner UI and an always open search
box. Most importantly, it included advertising targeted specifically
to the user's searches. Along with this change, we added options to
the API to let developers specify their Adsense details so that they
could earn money off of the targeted ads. To enable all of these
changes, developers had to specify a style:'new' in GoogleBarOptions
in the API.

We've been testing this new UI and ads for the past few months, and
we're very happy with the results. Users find the new search control
easier to use, and developers are finding the ads profitable.

Starting later this week, we will be serving the new GoogleBar to all
websites that have enabled the GoogleBar (via GMap2.enableGoogleBar),
regardless of whether they've specified style: 'new'.

If you do not like the new UI changes or you do not wish to have local
search ads served on your map, then you can remove the GoogleBar by
removing GMap2.enableGoogleBar() from your code. If you wish to test
your site with the new GoogleBar style, see the instructions in the
above blog post.