Hear About Conduit Yet?

Israel and California based Conduit is announcing a deal today with Google to provide search for their customizable toolbar product. The news itself isn’t all that interesting, although it will help Conduit with revenue. But the Conduit service itself is really taking off.

Conduit is a white-label, customizable toolbar for other web services. Like the Google and Yahoo, Conduit’s partners can offer users a branded toolbar with customizable functionality, such as a company logo, live chat, broadcasts to all users, etc. The problem, of course, is that most companies don’t have the resources or knowledge to create their own toolbar, and they are completely focused on their core business. Conduit is a good option for those companies.

The company now has 125,000 partners and 5,000,000 toolbar installs. Users can actually create a customized toolbar in a few steps (we’ve done it), for free, and offer it to users for download at a customized domain name ([example].ourtoolbar.com). If you register you can also qualify for revenue sharing from searches conducted on the toolbar.

We created a conduit toolbar for our New York party last November, and used it to update people on the details of the event. We had a few hundred downloads (most people still have it installed), and based on our experience we’re considering creating a permanent one that will include the most recent TechCrunch headlines and other functionality. If you have a community, this is a tool you may want to offer.

The company has raised $2 million in funding from Yozma, an Israeli venture firm.