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Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft
AmiMoJo writes: Last month Microsoft changed its policy on protecting search settings to include any software that attempts to hijack searches as malware. As a result, this month the Ask Toolbar, which most people will probably recognize as being unwanted crapware bundled with Java, was marked as malware and will now be removed by Microsoft's security software built in to Windows 7 and above.
What got them in the end was that they screwed with the user's search settings. Toolbars are a supported feature of Internet Explorer, but apps are not supposed to screw up search settings in the registry.
Doing so generates warning prompts on Windows, but because the user was already clicking through those to install Java they probably didn't notice an extra one for Ask.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What is the smallest browser space you have ever seen remaining? Once at a friends house I asked to use the internet and half the screen vertically plus around 1/10 horizontally was taken up by various "toolbars". I'd never even seen a horizontal one before that day.
I experience that with my wife. She's got a reasonably nice desktop for doing what she does (nothing important) but complains it runs slow. It was screaming fast once upon a time, so I go and run and rerun all the anti-virus software and malware removers, remove have the extensions that have installed themselves, reboot a few times in the process, and it's screaming fast again. The most toolbars I've counted was at least 6, and the search is almost always stuck on something undesirable.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is 2015. You don't need toolbars to do all that. Simply use Chrome and stay logged into your GMail, Hotmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
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I would tweak what you said to: "Google is mind bogglingly popular because its search results USED TO BE not dictated by short-sighted bean counters, and then market inertia now that they are".
I switched away from Google about a year ago because I was finally fed up with lousy result quality. My specific complaint is that Google ended its long-ago policy that every result contains every search term exactly as given. Wow, that was useful, but now Google just tries to guess what you want. That's nice and all, but if you think I'm a dumb user, then show me results for what I actually searched for and then make a suggestion about a search you think would be better. But just straight up giving me results that I didn't search for? No thanks, I switched.
I'm hoping they will automatically uninstall Chrome as well, since it somehow manages to reinstall itself surreptitiously so often. So many third party programs will install it during an update if you're not paying attention to which boxes to uncheck; and I know every time I go visit my mother she'll be asking about what this Chrome thing is and how to get rid of it. Most often it's the anti-malware software that puts that shit there, which is ironic since I consider anything being installed without my explicit permission to be malware. It should get rid of googlebar or whatever that's called, and all other opt-out software.