Today Windows Live Messenger prompted me for an upgrade.  I hadn’t done it in a while, so I thought it might be a good idea.  I expected that Microsoft would include some sort of “free toolbar.”  I was a little surprised by how they did it this time.  You can see from the screenshot that there is this nify “Toolbar” check box.

Live Messenger Upgrade

When you select it right side of the installation dialog changes to provide “details” as to what it is all about.

Toolbar Details

Really, reasonably innocuous.  However, if you notice in the “Installed with this program” list entries for the Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime and the Microsoft Sync Framework Services.  What exactly are these things and why does a browser toolbar need them?  Checking out Microsoft, doesn’t really reveal much about what these services do and why they need to be associated with a browser toolbar (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/bb887625.aspx#).

I think this time I’m going to go ahead and allow the toolbar to be installed.