A Gator By Any Other Name

MFS! writes "CNet reports that Gator, everyone's favorite ad software, is changing its name to Claria. Gator's CEO says "We feel that the Claria Corporation name will allow us to better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that we provide to consumers and advertisers." He fails to mention what "Claria" is supposed to mean or how it accomplishes this goal, but it seems that the name change may be no more than an attempt to distance the company from a moniker which has become involved in allegations of spyware."

Comments

Re:Gator is evil

[anakin357]

I work at a rather large ISP, and strangely enough, when there is obvious adware installed, when I tell them it's downloading advertisements and such, they actually beleive the ads are coming from websites they visit (sometimes ours).

I actually had someone the other day accuse our homepage of popping up pornographic advertisements. The very first thing out of my mouth was, "Have you installed KaZaa?"

He reluctantly agreed, and said "Oh, so it's KaZaa?"

"Yep, you need to get rid of that junk"...

Here's my point: People are stupid. Changing their name once every couple years lets them stay ahead of the curve, because remember, Chrismas is coming, and we'll have another ~5-10 million (guessing here) computer users on the internet. When a screen pops up saying would you like to syncronize your time, keep a calendar, be able to see the current weather conditions, etc etc, they think: "Well wouldn't that be cool?"

The answer is no.