OpenDNS Says Google-Dell Browser Tool is Spyware

PetManimal writes "David Ulevitch, the founder of OpenDNS, claims that Google and Dell have placed 'spyware' on Dell computers. Ulevitch made the claim based on his observation of the behavior of the Google Toolbar and homepage that comes preinstalled on IE in new Dell machines. He says that a browser redirector sends users who enter nonexistent URLs to a Dell-branded page loaded with Google ads. Another observer, Danny Sullivan, says that this is a different result than what happens on PCs without the redirector. However, the original article notes that Ulevitch has a vested interest in the results of mistyped URLs."

Comments

Instructions to Remove

[eldavojohn]

Anyone who's looking for a way to remove this, Dell's support site gives these instructions:

To uninstall the Google URL Assistant, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start and select Control Panel.
The Control Panel window appears.
2. Select Add or Remove Programs.
The Add or Remove Programs window appears.
3. Select Remove a Program.
The Add or Remove Programs utility window appears.
4. Click to highlight the URL Assistant program and click Remove.
5. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the removal process.

However, a user on the bottom of one of the links reports a way to disable it (but leave it on your machine) if you want to keep it:

In Internet Explorer, click on Tools,Internet Options,Programs, Manage Add-ons. Look for the CBrowserHelperObject published by Dell, then disable it.

Personally, I've bought two computers from Dell a long time ago and the first thing I did, like a good little Slashdotter, was format it and install a real operating system. When my friend bought a Dell, I brought a case of beer over and we took his Windows install disc and we re-installed Windows. Why? Well, just because of all the crap software like this that somehow magically is installed on a new box. If I recall, he had a 30 day trial version of Norton Antivirus, a trial version of Nero, quicktime crap, one of the most heinous media applications I've ever witnessed (due to his sound card) & to top it all off they had some 30 startup entries in msconfig--over half of which I couldn't tell what they were!

Now I work for a fortune 500 company and guess what we do with every box we get from Dell? Re-image it.

Now, for the 99% other Dell customers, this is just purely unfortunate because I'm not so naive to expect everyone to know how or why they should take the above actions. I hope that all the virus scanning apps (HiJackThis, Lavasoft's Adaware, etc) get this thing because Adaware is about the most useful thing I can show my family how to use frequently enough to keep the computer protected.

This sounds a lot like something the old Gateways would do. Huh, I never would have thought Dell would reach that level but, well, here we are. The important thing is to factor this in when you're thinking about a new computer. Hopefully some competition will spring up for Dell and, you know, quality of the software (not just the hardware) will start to matter for Dell.

Re:Instructions to Remove

[MobyDisk]

I can give multiple examples of this kind of stuff. I know of 2 Dell PC's purchased a year apart, and both of them came with 3 CD burning programs, all of which ran in the background, and none of them worked because they conflicted with each other. So right out of the box you could not burn CDs. That's unacceptable.

Re:Instructions to Remove

[TheLink]

"Now I work for a fortune 500 company and guess what we do with every box we get from Dell? Re-image it. "

If you are buying a bunch of boxes I heard you can send Dell your preferred image, and they'll image all of them for you.

This has nothing to do with Google toolbar...

[LLKrisJ]

... Or at least _not only_ The same behaviour happens on my company issued Dell D820. It comes loaded with IE6 and NO Google toolbar and yet when I mistype a URL I do not end up at the MSN search page like on any other IE installation! Instead IE redirects me to a Dell branded Google search page full of Google commercials.

Claim is complete FUD

[Odiumjunkie]

The gist of the 'Spyware' claim comes from OpenDNS claiming the error redirecting service from Google

has no clear name and is very hard to uninstall

Complete FUD. The service is called "Browser Address Error Redirector" - which is a completely accurate and clear name for the service, and to remove it, you uninstall it from the Add/Remove Programs dialogue, as you would any regular peice of software.

I'm sure slashdot denizens will have a good time discussing how useless the bundled software and trialware that comes with Dell computers is, and how the sensible thing to do is reinstall from scratch, but that's been the case for a while. There is zero story here.

Re:Claim is complete FUD

[hclyff]

Are you being sarcastic?

Browser - "What's a browser? You mean, like, the internet?"

Address - You are telling me that people who can't tell difference between a search bar and an address bar know what an internet address is?

Error - Sounds scary...

Redirector - "Redi-what?" (I very much doubt average user knows what's a redirect, you can as well tell them it polynormificalizes their antroendoretarterons, it does the same effect)

Decrapifier

[astrogirl2900]

Lifehacker recently had an article on a piece of software called the PC Decrapifier. I haven't tried it, but it seems relevant to this thread.

Re:Decrapifier

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Ran this on my Father-in-Laws spanky new Dell. Clean as a baby's bottom after doing so. Dunno if this specific piece of software was on this system tho (did this over Christmas). But, a VERY good piece of software whether it's a Dell, HP, Sony or other manufacturer to take your system back to the way it was before they got their hands on it :-)

Decrapify it

[spectrokid]

If you don't want to reinstal: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ My mother in law bought one. Now I am used to your anti-virus no longer getting updated if you don't pay. But when her spamkiller expired, her email stopped working . And I can assure you there is NO WAY she would have been able to fix that herself without paying.

Hi, I wrote that post...

[davidu]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I got a lot of feedback from people who just assumed I was biased and an underdog out to complain about Google. This is not what it's about!

Here's what I mean:

Use the smell test. Does what Google is doing smell bad? Is it giving users a good experience?
Compare:

• http://www.google.com/hws/dell/afe?hl=en&s=http:// microsoft.xom
• http://www.google.com/hws/gateway/afe?hl=en&s=http ://microsoft.xom
• http://www.google.com/hws/sony/afe?hl=en&s=http:// microsoft.xom
• http://www.google.com/hws/emachines/afe?hl=en&s=ht tp://microsoft.xom
• 
  with
  
• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microsoft.xom &btnG=Google+Search

(and if you want to see ours)

• http://guide.opendns.com/?url=microsoft.xom

If you just compare what google is doing to their own users you'll see that they are showing a terrible experience to the users who are Locked-In versus the users who have the choice to use any search service.

Thanks,

davidu

Re:David Ulevitch is a hipocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

Their product seems to use e.g. resolver1.opendns.com (208.67.222.222).
If I use that as my DNS, and do a lookup for www.google.com, I get
redirected to a CNAME of google.navigation.opendns.com.
What's up with that? DNS hijacking, anyone?

Re:Obligatory Google Reality Check

[medlefsen]

Google is not a "normal" publicly traded company. The power structure where insiders hold the special class B stock that has 10 times the voting power of the public class A stock means that they're aren't subject to the whims of public investors. Brin and Page have 30% of the power alone. Here's a quote from Google:

"We anticipate that our founders, executive officers, directors (and their affiliates) and employees will together own approximately 84.8 percent of our Class B common stock, representing approximately 83.6 percent of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock,"

On the flip side it's also true that a couple VC's have over 20% of the total power, but they were old investors of google and have always had a lot of power in the company.