Gator Will Replace Ads On Sites

Bill Dimm writes "This CNet article says that a new version of Gator, a browser plug-in for managing passwords that also can display pop-up ads for competing products when you visit web sites, is being developed that will launch its own ads over top of the banner ads on the sites you visit. The software achieves wide distribution by bundling (much like TopText) with file-sharing utilities, with over 18 million installations of the current version claimed on their web site."

Comments

Nothing wrong about it.

[luugi]

As long as the user knows what he's installing on his system, there's nothing illegal about it. If I downloaded a program that disabled banner adds when I visited a web site, would that be illegal?

As long a the user knows what's happening when he's intalling the software, the competitors have nothing to say.

Re:Nothing wrong about it.

[meldroc]

The problem is that the users don't know what's being installed. Gator is a program that silently piggybacks itself on other popular programs like Gozilla. It doesn't bring up its own screen saying "Now installing Gator." The only indications that Gator is installed is a blurb buried deep in the fine print of the twenty page click-thru license agreement, and Gator showing up in the Add/Remove Programs dialog. Worse, when you try uninstalling Gator, a piece of it still remains that continues to perform stealth advertisement hijacking until you uninstall it as well. Most non-computer-geeks won't have the time or inclination to figure this out.

Gator is almost virus-like in its attempts to conceal itself from the user, do things without their consent, and spread itself to more machines. It includes only the bare minimum required to make a paper-thin claim of ethical behavior. With Junkbuster, the user knows exactly what's going on. Gator does its best to make sure the user doesn't know it's working.

Re:Nothing wrong about it.

[norton_I]

No, but if my Tivo replaced ads put in by the broadcasters, they would be sued, and it wouldn't really matter whether I had agreed to it or not.

I would say there is a difference between removing something (ie, adding a 30 second skip or allowing me to fast forward through ads) and replacing it with different content that is represented as the original.

Like I said, I wouldn't have a problem if the popped up ads were clearly seperate from the original content, such as in the task bar, or the toolbar of your browser, nor would I object to software that allowed the user to block out some or all ads. That is merely allowing the consumer to choose what parts of a webpage they view. Replacing content is fraudulent. End of story.

Re:Nothing wrong about it.

[BeanThere]

Gator does its best to make sure the user doesn't know it's working

There's an obvious reason for this type of behaviour. Consider: if users were informed of exactly what they are installing and exactly what it does, and then given a choice about whether to install it or not, how many users would willingly install it? My guess, none, whatsoever. Thats why they have to try hide their behaviour. If this alone doesn't make it glaringly obvious that such software should not exist (i.e. exactly 0% of users would ever willingly choose to use it), then nothing will.

Its sad how much the computer industry relies specifically on the lack of user education amongst its client base. Software companies and hardware companies thrive on it. The success of Microsofts business is built on it. "Keep the users in the dark ..". All you see in the computer industry these days is companies attempting to trick their customers, lying to their customers, fooling their customers, suckering their customers, all relying on lack of user education. Its all around. I saw a banner ad today "if this ad is flickering, you've won! click here to claim your prize". Its an animated GIF, if its not flickering it means your browser doesn't support animated gifs .. but its just another case of relying on the cluelessness of your own client base. If a company NEEDS its users to be clueless in order to survive, it shouldn't be allowed to survive, period.

Re:Nothing wrong about it.

[crucini]

What's sad is that everyone is marketing to this 'passive consumer' who is a clueless victim of his software. Everyone is buying and selling 'desktop real estate' and 'eyeballs'. The assumption is that the consumer can be led around by the nose to any destination we see fit.

I think that in real life very few consumers fit this mold. The majority are angry and scared at the way their computers and the web seem to be fighting them. I think that the ideal of the 'passive consumer' does not come from experience, but from sick fantasy.

This is acted out constantly in meetings. We have a piece of Windows software that is installed with "InstallSheild Wizard". The marketing guy was complaining that it's too intimidating - we should just quietly install the software with hardly any notification to the user. Of course the programmers say "If that happened to me, I'd be mad." And the marketing guy says, "You're not normal. Normal people don't want to see a blue screen and bunch of steps of installation."

Re:This is flat out awesome!

[quartz]

Being a linux user, you don't have to vew ads NOW. There are a myriad ways, from junkbusters to /etc/hosts manipulation to block ads in Linux. I don't use any of them, since I don't find banner ads that intrusive, but I may have to if everyone starts following the lead of Cnet with those huge, distractive ads in the middle of the story. But for now, I only disable Javascript popups, which annoy the hell out of me.

Gator? Heh. In this respect, you do have a valid point. If all the advertisers decide Unix users are too few to be worth the effort, and start designing ad technologies that only work in Windows/MacOS, maybe we will get ad-free web surfing by default. I already get it to some extent, i.e. I don't see Flash ads since I haven't bothered to install the plugin. Now if only some advertiser organization would do us a favor and declare Flash the standard for web ads...

Gator wars?

[MAXOMENOS]

Web sited that make their money through banner advertising have got to be unhappy about this development. Which leads me to wonder: what are they going to do to ensure to their customers (read: advertisers) that their banner ads will not be gator-substituted?

Blocking web browsers that are Gator-enabled? Probably not the best idea, but if enough important sites band together, this could put Gator out of business.

Lawsuits against Gator? This might not be a bad idea, although I have no idea how it would go through.

Hacking Gator to get around banner-ad substitution?

Offering text-and-hyperlink-only ads, Google style?

What I'm really hoping to see is Gator offer a "subscription service" to web sites..."pay up or we'll substitute your ads." That would lead to a most interesting fight indeed. And to a lot of lawyers making a lot of money.

Selling Privacy

[Craig Maloney]

It's amazing to me what people will sell their privacy for. Password management? Seems like the user is getting the short end of the deal with this plugin.

Also, with IE and Mozilla/Netscape now offering password management, is Gator relevant anymore?

And....

[Heph_Smith]

15 million uninstalled it twice, the other 3 million just reformated.

Re:And....

[OmegaDan]

the joke is, it dosen't uninstall even when you press uninstall, it still leaves its dlls active in the system, commet cursor does the same damn thing. The only way to get the damn thing out of your system is to use ad-aware or hunt the dlls down yourself (can be difficult sometimes)

Remember what pays for that content!

[Gumber]

We all hate ads, but remember, the ads you see help pay for the pages you see.

Gator, on the other hand is a complete and total leach. They are selling advertising on other peoples content without compensation.

Gator - a legal virus?

[hattig]

In my opinion, Gator is a virus. It is attached to the software installations for other products, and it usually installs itself on user's systems without their permission. When you try to remove it, it creates a copy of itself so it is not deleted.

It also interferes with the running of your computer. When I go to a website, I want to see that website, and view the ads that paid for that website. Gator changes that, and thus in effect is altering content without my permission. It uses up my computer's cycles and bandwidth to alter the contents of my computer's memory.

So is Gator only legal because it is a company, and has corporates paying them? Gator does appear to be a protection racket as well - pay us money, or we will take away your business (by showing competitor's ads on your page).

Christ, someone set the FBI onto this company. IMHO, of course.

Get used to it... the 'ad cold war' is coming...

[burtonator]

With Mozilla nearing 1.0 and Konqueror looking more awesome by the second, everyone should expect this type of 'ad warfare' to come to Linux/UNIX soon.

The truth is that I am *amazed* it has taken this long to happen. About 2.5 years ago I was working for a company that implemented this. It would have been a great ad revenue stream. Unfortunately the company was fucked and nothing ever happened.

The only way for companies to combat this is to deploy an 'electronic warfare' counter-attack against gator.

The sites would deploy a plugin which would detect gator modifications an remove them.

Of course this means that gator would detect it's detectors and remove them too.

The result would be an 'ad cold war' which would only leave users as victims.

This is similar to the toner wars from Diamond Age. If you don't abide by the rules expect to get into a fight...

Kevin

Re:This is flat out awesome!

[tftp]

I dislike ads very much, and I use Linux and Win2K boxes all the time. Rare an ad slips through my filters. So here is how it works.

Firstly, I use Mozilla on both OSes. I configure it to ask permission before loading images, and remember the choice. This quickly populates the database of junk image sites. Same is done with cookies, of course. Animated GIFs are set to never loop.

Secondly, I use Squid + Junkbuster chain on another computer. It acts as a caching/filtering proxy to block ads and cookies that slipped through Mozilla.

Thirdly, the firewall is configured to direct all traffic to/from known Evil Sites (tm) to where it belongs. Input packets are denied, outgoing are rejected. Doubleclick and friends are all there, as well as some "legitimate" Web sites that have questionable privacy policies (like Real). This blocks a spyware traffic from apps like RealPlayer - which require 15 minutes to properly set up, otherwise they send everything they can to an unknown 3rd party.

Fourthly, though I haven't done that yet, you can disable outgoing traffic through your firewall, except the proxy server. This makes the whole Web accessible only through your proxy.

If you want to "sponsor" some Web site and give it an ad image request without actually seeing the ad, you can use Mozilla's CSS hacks. Then the image will be downloaded but not displayed. This is also necessary in SSL mode because the proxy becomes transparent and can't block images for you; then only Mozilla itself can help.

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