An interesting free disk defragmenting program, SmartDefrag from IOBit, contains this free browser tool bar offer.  It also helpfully offers to change my search engine.

IOBit - SmartDefrag

Internet Explorer 7 has been a good browser for me.  It rarely crashes on me.  Yet yesterday IE7 had this weird crash.

IE7 Crash

WebRoot has changed their installation dialog a bit.  The “we’re going to install the toolbar unless you say ‘no’” message now appears on the very first screen of the installation dialog.  At least I don’t have to go looking for it; that is an improvement.  Better still would be to assume that I don’t want it installed.

WebRoot SpySweeper

Once again, another application, Winzip, wants to install a free toolbar for Internet Explorer.

WinZip - Google Toolbar

I’m probably dense, but I don’t get what the attraction behind loading down Internet Explorer with all of these “free” toolbars is all about.  This is particularly true when it is an application that I would otherwise pay for, like WinZip.

This post is more of “collecting” yet another example of a “free” and “helpful” browser toolbar that could be installed than a rant.  I think that point was fairly clear the last time.

Sun's "Free" Toolbar

The interesting thing about this one is that Sun is offering to install the MSN toolbar.  The last time I posted on this subject Sun was installing the Google toolbar.  What gives?  Why the change of heart Sun?

Fake anti-virus warnings like the one below really piss me off.  This one came up in Internet Explorer while using Google to do some research.

Antivirus 2009 in Internet Explorer

This dialog popped up from a perfectly legitimate link in Google results.  Regardless of whether the dialog is closed with the OK button, the Cancel button, or the window close button, the user is taken to a malicious web site.  The web site behind the link redirects to winfix2008live.com/_freescan.php.

Pop-up blocking is activated in Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer Popup Blocking Set

Firefox is no less immune in this respect.

Antivirus 2009 in Firefox

 Apple Safari on a MacBook Pro has the same issue.

Antivirus 2009 in Safari

I’m a fairly knowledgable computer use with up-to-date security software installed on my systems, so it was a bit of a surprise when browsers started popping up warnings about being “struck by the virus.”  It is easy to see how “average” computer users can be misled by these sorts of popups

Why is it that every application thinks that it needs to install a toolbar into Internet Explorer (or other browsers) to help me with my browsing experience?

I’ve collected a few examples of installation programs “helpfully” offering to install a toolbar into Internet Explorer; there are, undoubtedly, many others.

AVG's "Free" Toolbar

Skype's "Free" Toolbar

SpySweeper's "Free" Toolbar

Sun's "Free" Toolbar

These are just a few of the “helpful” toolbars that are offered by these otherwise reputable vendors.

Most often these toolbars are installed automatically if the user runs the default installation.  I’m a fairly savvy user (I write software professionally afterall) and I normally run through “custom” or “advanced” install options if provided in the installer to see what “helpful” things I might be signing up for (there’s always the “send us anonymous feed back about your experience to help us improve the user experience” opt-out option).  Unsophisticated users, like my wife or my parents, won’t likely take the custom installation route because it probably seems to hard or they feel like they “don’t know enough” to make informed choices while customizing.

Ok, I do know why these tools are installed:  reputable vendors install them to “improve the user experience.”  That’s marketing spin to obscure the fact that these toolbars are really there to help the company and its “carefully selected partners” obtain more information about what interests consumer and help the “better tailor products to ” their “core demographic.”  In other words, they’re installed because it helps the marketers sell more stuff.

A lot of the toolbars are really pretty harmless … other than slowing down the browsing experience with other stuff loaded in memory and all of the extra communications to improve the user experience.

Software vendors should take the “opt-in” rather than the “opt-out” approach to installing these helpers.  It would make the default installation process faster, safer, and result in less clutter on user systems and user browsers.  But, and this is why they won’t, if they did the marketers would pay less for the information because fewer computers would actually be returning data to the marketers and, in turn, their clients would pay them less for the information.  All marketing operations should be “opt-in” rather than “opt-out”, but that isn’t likely to happen unless consumers rise up and demand a change in law to clearly disclose all marketing data collection operations and require that the default answer to the “Would you like to participate” or “Would you like this widget that is going to collect all sorts of information about you and send it to our servers so we can sell you more stuff” questions be “No, I don’t.”

The vendors that choose to add these “helpers” to their installation packages aren’t likely to stop anytime soon.  If anything, more vendors will feel the pressure to do this as well.  It will be a challenge to train unsophisticated users to properly deal with installation programs to minimize the chances that unwanted “helpers” will be installed on their system.

Update:  Noticed I missed the SpySweeper image when I posted this.

Google Chrome does come with an interesting warning feature.

Google Chrome Warning

I’m not sure how accurate the warning of malware is, but it is certainly interesting.  If it is accurate then it could be very useful.

 
Google released a new web browser today, Google Chrome.  Currently Chrome is only available for Windows.

In my brief experiments with it on a Windows Vista 32-bit system it seems to be an interesting, if incomplete entry into the 21st century browser wars.  Chrome seems to me to be a bit faster starting up and loading web pages than Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, and Opera 9.  But I haven’t actually confirmed that it is faster.

One feature that I’ve noticed missing from Chrome is RSS and Atom feed discovery.  If feed discovery does exist in the browser it isn’t obvious.  Google’s marketing spin is that it is “not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications.”  RSS/Atom feed discovery is, at least to me, an essential part of a “modern platform.”

I think I like the idea that Chrome spawns a separate process for each tab page.

Google Chrome Tasks

The idea behine this is that if one web page fails it does not take the rest of the browser with it.  I’ve had just that happen on occassion, so it seems like a useful innovation in the browser space.

Google Chrome even comes with its own Task Manager!

Google Chrome Task Manager

This seems like it might be a handy little tool for inspecting the operation of Chrome.  ”Stats for nerds” opens a web page with some other interesting details about Chrome.  Download it and try it out.

Google Chrome seems like it might be a viable entrant in to the browser marketplace.  As a part-time web developer it will certainly become one of the tools on Windows with which I test web applications.