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Going From Gator to Claria
Ant writes "Wired News has an article on the famous spyware company that went from Gator to Claria. From the article: 'Three years ago the company was considered a parasite and a scourge. Today it's a rising star -- selling virtually the same product. How a pop-up pariah won the adware wars.'" The name change happened about two years ago, and a lot has changed since then.
Is it because the High Priest Microsoft deemed Claria Clean?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Few people in the online business community question the idea that marketing software should track user behavior. Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says it's possible to track people online without being underhanded. The FTC is in favor of online advertising, she explains, "and sometimes tracking makes advertising work better for consumers." Esther Dyson, who has been harshly critical of spyware companies in her influential newsletter, Release 1.0, agrees. "As long as there's disclosure and people are given a choice, I think monitoring users' behavior isn't a problem," she says.
The problem is, the online business community never asked the right question. What they need in that disclosure is "Are you willing to give up half the bandwidth and computer memory you paid for so that we can serve you advertising?"
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
How a pop-up pariah won the adware wars.
- Won? The tech savy people ditched IE for Firefox, Opera or simply moved to Linux, so the tech savy people "won". The non tech savy people had no clue WTF was Gator, nothing changed today, they have no clue who Claria, 180 and other scumware makers are. All they know that their PC is spamming them with p0rn and it's slower. Not to mention they accept this blindly. Face it, 90% of computer users are too lazy, don't care and/or clueless.
Not enough has changed until these types of programs are illegal, and the executives of the companies that make them are serving Enron prison sentences.
They are human scum of the worst possible kind. High Priests in the religion of capitalist greed.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
From the fine article: "Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Microsoft came close to acquiring Claria." Guess what that means, folks?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Though I am a fellow hater of Gator/Claria, I don't actually disagree with your quote from Lydia Parnes. For instance, I like the way Gmail does it. It doesn't install ANYTHING client-side, so it's not wasting my computing resources, and if a Webmail service is going to show me ads to make it viably profitable, at least this one is going to show me ones that are more likely to be stuff I'm interested in.
Just like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, James D. Rockefeller, and Leland Stanford did i the past, Claria is trying to do good to pave over all the ill deeds they performed to get them to where they are now.
If the effort to change their ways is sincere, then they can be forgiven. As comments thus far have shown, proving that can be pretty hard to do.
To say that they've won the war is like saying that Japan won the war when they bombed Pearl Harbor. I'm fairly certain that every tech support guy, network administrator and general techno-geek goes out of thier way to crush, kill, and remove every piece of spyware they can find. I know that I do.
The only thing they won is the attention of the media, and the sales from people who click on everything and anything they see...in short, the kind of people you wish you could set up a Linux box, lock them out of everything more dangerous than thier web browser, and never let them know the root password.
Morons.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
The day that Google sells my info to bombard me with pop-ups and silent software installs is the day that I'll treat them like Gator. In the meantime, I'll treat them like Google.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.