I'm pretty sure the toolbar pays on searches made using it.
If you do a search with it, you'll find that the top links are all sponsored links.
This thing is a great tool, and highly customizeable.
The thing about it though, is that it takes a lot of work to make it 'just right', and there are a bunch of things that need constant updating to keep fresh. It can use RSS feeds, you can change/swap links to your various sites, chat, and send messages with URLs and pics.
We're looking around to see if we can find somebody willing to maintain ours, and if we can, we'll be going full bore with it.