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Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine
BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."
Tim,
Please read the story yourself;
It's not Firefox that Vista tries to change but IE8. Google's toolbar caught the action in IE8 and alerted him to the change. He then said that there was no alert option offered in Firefox's Google toolbar.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Picasa defaults to change your IE search to Google.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Indeed, also making itunes an optout insted of optin when doing quicktime updates on a windows machine that has no itunes installed.
Google's antitrust is because of a book deal, not search market tomfoolery.
Completely different playground.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.
Any atribution of this action to Microsoft, or that the provider was being set to Bing are suppositions - there is no evidence of that provided.
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
Actually, Microsoft released a new version that can be uninstalled or disabled using the standard Firefox Add-Ons UI.
But, the first version was pretty easy to uninstall...it took me about two minutes after the Firefox restart that highlighted the new add-on to find the registry entry (somewhere under the Mozilla key in the Software hive) and delete it.
dont use quicktime! in the very rare instance that you need quicktime you could use quicktime alternative... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm
This isn't Windows - it's entirely up to the installer author whether or not to create icons (desktop, start menu, start menu favorites, quick launch bar (yeah, there's more...)).
Most installers give you the option to install them or not. Okay.. most -older- installers do. Ever since 'usability experts' decreed that users want -less- choice, things just get tossed everywhere, whether you like it or not. More user-friendly to have 20 icons in the quick launch bar, apparently? whatever.
But even if you don't give that option - there's no reason the installer can't detect whether the user removed the icons -after- installation when you're installing an update.. and just not re-install them (or prompt the user).
It might not be able to easily figure out -where- a user relocated icons, if that's what they did, but presuming you're only upgrading and not changing anything, those old icons (shortcuts) should still work just fine from wherever the user put them.
The only reason most installers don't is per that usability stuff. Say you removed the icon for QuickTime, now you install the update, so you expect to have QuickTime available... but you search and search on your desktop (as the layman you are), and.. no QuickTime icon. "Did something go wrong during installation?", you might ask yourself, and re-install again. Still no icon. So poste hate-mail in a forum and give Apple some bad press; even though it'd be your own fault, as you decided at some point in the past that you didn't want that icon.
Still better that Safari on Mac which doesn't allow anything but Google as the search engine.
I think you have been misinformed.