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China Malware War Gets Personal
bcaulfield writes to tell us Zhou Hongyi has filed a 3.6 million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against Yahoo China. Hongyi, the former president of Yahoo China, filed his suit in response to comments made in a recent Yahoo press conference accusing him of unethical business practices. From the article: "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties. Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. 'Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,' he said. 'It was my money to do with as I wanted.'" Update 08/20/2006 15:01 GMT by SM: Corrected the currency for the suit.
...this isn't an article about a newly developed service. This belongs in YRO.
Informatus Technologicus
I've tagged this article incorrect because of the summary. So much wrong, so little right.
So, in some way every browser toolbar is a malware.
Not quite. The most one can conclude is that every toolbar writer had an incentive to make his toolbar malware. Some, presumably, resisted the temptation. This guy did not. And his argument ( 'everybody else was doing it' ) was something that most of us learned was an insuficient excuse back in kindergarten.
All big and small players have toolbars as a tool that increases their market share, or access to the customers. Some toolbars are undoubtedly malware, while others aren't (perhaps Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo tolbars, etc.). But their real goal is the same: to direct you to sites which they promote and get paid in return. Perhaps calling them a malware is too strong word. In the end, user shouldn't limit themselves to single search engine. This is solved nicely in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 through drop-down menu list. Still, Google made toolbar for Firefox although it is default search option - just to ensure no other ones are being used by customer.
I may be wrong, but doesn't Firefox get a kickback for sending people to Google? If they do, that doesn't seem all that ethically different from Google's own toolbar, malware-wise. If not, I apologize for the misinformation.