Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On

An anonymous reader sends along a posting from the Grooveking blog on a group of Stanford students who got together to help promote Firefox and ended up releasing a long overdue eBay Toolbar for Firefox before Mozilla and eBay could release their jointly developed extension in Europe. Mozilla's COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs. "Besides basic search features, it removes external ads on the site and allows users to see thumbnail pictures on ALL search items, even those sellers didn't pay for. An eBay toolbar has been long overdue... eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees. But eBay users get a really good deal."

Comments

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

[mollymoo]

So, you're saying that you wouldn't have clicked the ads anyway, so eBay don't lose anything. That sounds a lot like the "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" justification for illegally copying music, video and software. I think the DMCA, product activation, Sony rootkits, Vista Content Protection etc. do hurt people. The similar mechanisms which will become part of the web in an effort to enforce ad viewing will hurt people too.

Re:Makes sense of this slogan

[mollymoo]

It's been modded flamebait because some people don't like being reminded that taking something (content) and not giving what is expected (eyeballs on ads) in return is unfair and damaging.