Google Follows Yahoo In Questionable Bundling Deal With Adobe
from the please-explain-why dept
About a year ago, a lot of people were questioning why Macromedia made a deal to bundle Yahoo's toolbar with Flash downloads by default -- a practice many pointed out was quite similar to the way spyware was included with other apps. In fact, many seemed to feel it was sneaky and untrustworthy. Since then, Macromedia merged with Adobe, who apparently didn't have a problem with these types of deals, because they've now done a similar deal with Google for their toolbar to be included on Shockwave Player downloads. It's not clear if the Yahoo/Flash deal is replaced by this one, or if you just get competing toolbars based on which Adobe tool you download. Either way, bundling totally unrelated products as a default setting -- especially after the widespread controversy over Yahoo doing the same thing last year -- has to make some wonder how this fits into Google's "sliding scale" of evil.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
....Common Sense
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Shame on you Google
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Toolbars
Just like installing any IM appz - u can choose whether or not to use defualt settings (homepage, etc.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Toolbars
Just like installing any IM appz - u can choose whether or not to use defualt settings (homepage, etc.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In my book, it makes both their products look unprofessional and sloppy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Agreed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why do people bother with toolbars to begin with? They are annoying and get in the way.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
who cares
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: who cares
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sadly
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ahem
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's about money
Somebody outbid the other... and this is competitive space. Get used to it, there's nothing evil about it considering the convenience.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Toolbars
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Flash and Yahoo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's business & good for U
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
re: Sadly
"if you arent smart enough to read through everything when installing something on your computer"
You don't do tech support for a living, do you?
And we have links to both Yahoo and Google on $Company_Website.
/me weeps
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Even Sadder
And SRNissen, if you were in fact advanced enough to download google toolbar on your own, a single click would not bother you on the installation of this file, seeing as that you probably also select "Custom" when going through your install to tweak it to your liking.
Google toolbar is a blessing to any non-advanced user who downloads it. Is it a sneaky tactic? Yes. But so is your credit card sending you a letter to sign up for a partner companies service, or a magazine including those slip cards for extra subscriptions to sister magazines.
Stop being so negative people, money happens.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]