Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Google Bundles Toolbar With Adobe Apps 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the jab-landing-close-to-home dept.
grammar fascist writes "Sci-Tech Today reports that Google is paying a 'significant amount' to bundle Google Toolbar with certain Adobe downloads. From the article: 'The initial venue for the Google mini-app will be downloads of the popular and free Shockwave multimedia player. The move is seen by some observers as an effort to outflank Microsoft, especially as Internet Explorer 7 nears its formal launch this summer [...] Interestingly, Google's search toolbar will be available only when Shockwave is downloaded for use with Internet Explorer on Windows.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Google Bundles Toolbar With Adobe Apps More

Google Bundles Toolbar With Adobe Apps

Comments Filter:

  • Google crazyness.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25, 2006 @05:33AM (#15599810)
    Next step will be start advertising in pdf files !

    • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      This may be that next step. I recently got a Dell PC with Google Desktop pre-installed (but disabled until I enabled it after installing the software of my choice to replace IE, Outlook etc). Google Desktop seemed to be working fine as a search tool, until one day I started Internet Explorer. All of a sudden my firewall started warning me of outgoing connections from GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe, and ads started popping up from my taskbar. Even after closing IE, this continued, and after searching the preferenc
      • Are you sure it was google desktop responsible for all those ads or perhaps it was all the p0rn sites visited with IE.

        • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:4, Informative)

          by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @11:20AM (#15600586)

          Are you sure it was google desktop responsible for all those ads or perhaps it was all the p0rn sites visited with IE.

          Pretty sure. Turns out it is a feature called "Alerts", which there is no mention of in the normal Preferences, or the documentation for Google Desktop, but if you enable the Desktop Sidebar and look in the menu for that, there is an extra item "Customize Alerts...", where you can disable them. Since I never use the sidebar, I had no idea this feature existed, I guess it got turned on by the IE Google Toolbar since it lay dormant until I fired up IE for the first time.

          As for the mods that modded you +1 Informative, rather than Funny, and my original post -1 Troll, you need to stop smoking the Google crack guys.

      • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by uvajed_ekil ( 914487 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @05:54AM (#15599853)
        Google Desktop seemed to be working fine as a search tool, until one day I started Internet Explorer. All of a sudden my firewall started warning me of outgoing connections from GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe, and ads started popping up from my taskbar. Even after closing IE, this continued, and after searching the preferences and terms of service for Google Desktop and finding nothing about this "feature", I have now banished this Google spyware from my system.

        I use Google for searches and for unimportant email, but I know the company is not my friend, as they would like me to believe. But I won't use other Google software that has to much access to my computer without necessarily telling me everything it is doing. And I won't run IE except in very rare circumstance when Firefox or Opera can't load a page I really ned to get to. I suspect Google will sell-out a lot of security or usability for ad revenue.

      • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Killshot ( 724273 )
        I am pretty sure google does not serve ads in this way. I have google desktop and never had this problem.

      • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:3, Informative)

        by rm69990 ( 885744 )
        I never experienced any ads or any of the behaviour you describe when using Google Desktop....in-fact, of all the reviews and everything I have read about the program, you are the first to even say anything.

        As for the firewall thing, did you enable Search Across Computers by any chance? Did you read the linked to privacy policy explaining what the feature does?
      • GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe has not been widely reported to cause any problems with popups despite its wide use, so your problem likely lies elsewhere, like in Internet Explorer.

    • [Redacted] Space for sale! (Score:5, Funny)

      by sethstorm ( 512897 ) * on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:31AM (#15599941) Homepage
      They could sell ads that take the place of redacted text. But then the original text still is there though, and what would you advertise on an NSA memo?

    • Re:Google crazyness.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xymor ( 943922 )
      That's actually good ideia. Download the e-book for free, and the ads pay for the royaties. And could still buy a ad-free hardcopy if you want.

  • I'm all for it (Score:5, Funny)

    by imbaczek ( 690596 ) <(mf.atzcop) (ta) (kezcabmi)> on Sunday June 25, 2006 @05:38AM (#15599817) Journal
    As long as it works on Linux, with Firefox and will give me flash 8.

    • Re:I'm all for it (Score:3, Informative)

      by SimGuy ( 611829 )
      Flash 9 is coming.... http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ [adobe.com]

    • web -1.0 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:29AM (#15599938)
      The WWW was initially all about information: it is a way so people can publish data, people can get the data and they can follow the right hyperlinks that lead to other related data. It is a distributed, cooperative, data sharing thing.

      Now we have a new kind of WWW applications. It's applications that use the web browser as their GUI platform and run in the web browser. Such applications are, advanced word processors, spreadsheets, e-mail readers and eventually the Browser In The Browser secret project google's been working on. These applications have NOTHING to do with the concept of the WEB.

      It is "scripts" for the IE/Mozilla program, like java programs for the JVM, C# programs for .NET, perl and python scripts, etc. The difference is that everybody has one of those two browsers, so the user does not have to download anything and that there is no need to install the application since it is downloaded and executed by visiting the URL. Some programmers have convinced some stupid venture capitalists, that this is the next big thing, and the news about AJAX circulates to attract more venture capitalists to spend more money to buy AJAX. Not a bad idea.

      But for the users, the IE/Mozilla platform is the most insecure way to run their applications. Their application is constantly connected to the internet. Both browsers have numerous vunerabilities and new ones are discovered every day. The application downloads and "runs" new data, very often without the user knowing about it (through hidden javascript links and the flash player). The user cannot trace, debug or even study the AJAX code that runs on their IE/Mozilla platform. Through asynchronous javascript and flash, binary proprietary code runs on their PC with full priviledges. And to all these add that javascript is a terrible programming language and that the GUI in the browser was designed for forms and was never good for things like an interactive text shell. \paragraph

      The result is that you get poor applications, that are slow, very insecure, do things without the user's control and it's a Mozilla/IE lockin.
      That is Web -1.0

      • The result is that you get poor applications, that are slow, very insecure, do things without the user's control and it's a Mozilla/IE lockin.

        Right, because it's so much slower for me to middle-click "Writely" in my favorites bar and have it pop up in a new tab, than to fire up the gargantuan Microsoft Word (or in my case at home, iWork Pages).

        Oh and because there's absolutely NO value added by having my data accessible and editable from anywhere, using any modern browser. And there's clearly no worth i

  • Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Sunday June 25, 2006 @05:43AM (#15599827) Homepage
    If the alternative is bundling the MSN search bar, I'm completely in favor of this.

    • Re:Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe@[ ]-baldwin.net ['joe' in gap]> on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:36AM (#15599950) Homepage Journal
      Oh, so it's alright if Google does it, but not if Microsoft does it? It's a pain in the hole either way.

      Google are inconveniencing everyone through this. Acrobat Reader is already a 20MB download for reasons I can't imagine. Why bloat Shockwave in the same way?

      • Re:Alternatives (Score:2, Informative)

        by danielpavel ( 243201 )
        Re: Acrobat Reader.

        I don't understand why people bother with AR anymore. Other PDF viewers like FoxIt Reader [foxitsoftware.com] manage to do nostly the same in less than 1MB.
        • "I don't understand why people bother with AR anymore. Other PDF viewers like FoxIt Reader manage to do nostly the same in less than 1MB."

          Does FoxIt have a search feature that'll go through entire folders and search those documents at the same time? I use this frequently...

          • Re:Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Crayon Kid ( 700279 )
            Does FoxIt have a search feature that'll go through entire folders and search those documents at the same time? I use this frequently...
            Ah, but how relevant are you? I'll go out on a limb and venture that most people do not need to do that. They just need to look at PDF's rendered properly, use their internal table of contents, do a text search and print.
            • "Ah, but how relevant are you?"

              I was asking out of personal interest, not out of some desire to shoot it down. I hope the developers don't share your attitude, though. It's not like it's a super hard feature to write.
            • If most people need correct PDF rendering, they shouldn't be using FoxIt. It's been shown that Adobe (and also GSView) render PDFs more correctly than FoxIt, xpdf, evince, etc. Just ask the Scribus people.

      • I stopped using Acrobat reader a long time ago. It's so frigging slow and it's a huge resource hog.

        I use FoxItReader [foxitsoftware.com]. It's super fast, the download is less than 1 meg. The only downside I've found is that it only works with Windows.

        • I stopped using Acrobat reader a long time ago. It's so frigging slow and it's a huge resource hog. I use FoxItReader [foxitsoftware.com]. It's super fast, the download is less than 1 meg. The only downside I've found is that it only works with Windows.

          I found one more downside: I can't zoom the contents of a rectangle which I drag with the mouse. When working with A0 PDF drawings, this is almost a "need to have" feature.

          (And I will have to learn some new keyboard shortcuts.)

          But apart from that, it

        • Certain boxes with a background color are frequently printed with large opaque stripes across them... There are other compatability issues, but this is the one I hit most recently.

          It's nice, but you still have to have a copy of Acrobat Reader around too.
      • Google are inconveniencing everyone through this. Acrobat Reader is already a 20MB download for reasons I can't imagine. Why bloat Shockwave in the same way?

        When I first read this article I thought, "God I hate bundled software!" But then I relized that I haven't installed Flash for IE on Windows in like 8 years. I guess I really don't care about this instance. Now if they struck a deal with Redhat or the Debian Foundation or something...

  • of course targets only IE (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @05:59AM (#15599865) Journal
    Interestingly, Google's search toolbar will be available only when Shockwave is downloaded for use with Internet Explorer on Windows.

    Of course it targets only IE. If somebody is smart enough to not use IE, then surely he is smart enough to not use msn search or any other crap. He might even conciously choose to not use google, but others!

    as an example my search toolbar includes:

    http://www.google.com/search?s [google.com]
    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=s&meta=site3Dgro ups [google.com]
    http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=s [google.com]
    http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2c %20off=1&q=define:s&btnG=Search [google.com]
    http://packages.debian.org/ [debian.org]
    http://ask.com/ [ask.com]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =s&go=Go [wikipedia.org]
    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/search/index.cgi?q=s [wolfram.com]
    http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=s [m-w.com]
    http://freshmeat.net/search?q=s [freshmeat.net]
    • forgot to mention that "s" in those queries is actually written as a 'percent's - that's the place where the queried string goes. I just cannot submit %s written as it is written, because it is replaced with 'percent'25s
    • www.google.com/search?q=%s
      www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2c%20off = 1&q=define:%s&btnG=Search
      groups.google.com/groups?q=%s&meta=site%3Dgroups
      groups.google.com/groups?selm=%s
      images.google.com/images?q=%s
      packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?key words=%s&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&rele ase=all
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go= Go
      mathworld.wolfram.com/search/index.cgi?q=%s
      encyklopedia.pwn.pl/szukaj.php?co=%s
      www.

  • Already happening, really (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JLSigman ( 699615 ) <jlsigman@hotmail.com> on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:03AM (#15599884) Homepage Journal
    We install Shockwave and Adobe Reader on all of the computer at work. Right now, Shockwave wants to install Yahoo toolbar and Adobe wants to install Google toolbar and desktop. I guess Yahoo's about to be out of luck?

  • this hurts ADBE more than it helps Google (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:05AM (#15599890)
    This reminds me of the Yahoo-Toolbar in Acrobat7, this brings nothing for Adobe - but a slight decline in reputation as a manufacturer of high-end software tools.

    • When an organization reaches a certain market share or amount of power, it reaches a sort of tipping point into arrogance, hubris and control-freakery, manifested in increasing its efforts to exploit all the other parties it deals with to the maximum degree. Microsoft and the **AA are long since way on the far side of that point; similarly on a larger scale the USA in the international arena; and now on a small scale, Adobe.

      Last weekend I was collecting installers in preparation to reinstall Windows and w

      • I don't know why, but I get the standalone installer by default
        as opposed to the download manager one.
        *does a little test*
        Aha! Javascript is the culprit.
        If you enter adobe's site with javascript disabled enabled,
        they give you access to the standalone installer.
        I used NoScript in Firefox 1.5.

        current link in case you cannot replicate this:
        http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/7 x/7.0.8/enu/AdbeRdr708_en_US.exe

        Since I already had this version installed I had to
        uninstall acrobat reader to test whethe
        • Thanks for the information!

          From a practical point of view it's good that these things are fixable. However, the obnoxious presumption of Adobe's settings remains offensive and lowers my opinion of the company.

          I think the big picture here is that Adobe has about reached the point of diminishing returns when it comes to enticing people with better products - Photoshop for example, is about the best it can be, or at least improvements won't be as dramatic now, and similarly with other products. So the company

  • Obnoxious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rm999 ( 775449 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:09AM (#15599898)
    I hate bundled software - I find it annoying, and everynow and then I forget to unclick the box when I am quickly installing something. I know a lot of freeware and toolbar companies do it, but I always thought (hoped?) Google was above that.

    • Re:Obnoxious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vistic ( 556838 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:25AM (#15599930)
      I began looking at the comments for this story just to see how many comments will say it's a good thing or how many have excuses why it's acceptable.

      I was disappointed there were so many.

      Google Toolbar is a good program for those who use IE (I think it's totally unnecessary for Mozilla) but Google or not, bundled software is just obnoxious. It's sad to see Google going down this road. If I want to install Google Toolbar, I will go to google's website and download and install it. If I go to the shockwave download site, then I only want shockwave.

      Google's contributing to the problem a lot of people have, where they have too many programs installed on their systems they never wanted. Too many programs installed even, that they don't even know are there.

      • Re:Obnoxious (Score:3, Interesting)

        by stunt_penguin ( 906223 )
        *sigh*

        I have to agree, this is a step too far as far as bundling goes- the Shockwave player is supposed to be as small a download as possible in order to lower the barrier to installation. Someone with a DSL connection may not mind the extra few seconds of download time, but someone with a shockwave download they're waiting on so they can use a site on their modem may get pissed off and not view the site at all.

        Basically it adds to the payload of the plugin and makes it harder to use shockwave on your
      • vistic said ... "Google Toolbar is a good program for those who use IE (I think it's totally unnecessary for Mozilla) but Google or not, bundled software is just obnoxious""

        Its not just obonxious, its adding an software that we cant use to an otherwise useful program. Extra toolbars from Google, Yahoo, or anyone else for that matter are a violation of the security policy where I work. This means that I have to start figuring out how to remove them from the system or worse, stop using their programs. Its
        • Extra toolbars from Google, Yahoo, or anyone else for that matter are a violation of the security policy where I work. This means that I have to start figuring out how to remove them from the system or worse, stop using their programs. Its a shame that as an administrator I cant use a program becuase of the bundled extra crap.

          As an administrator, you can probably work out how to uncheck the option to install it.

        • Re:Obnoxious (Score:3, Insightful)

          by penix1 ( 722987 )
          "When will software vendors realise that users want to install just a single program and dont need or want bundled extra crud? Maybe more important, how do we stop this trend with Windows programs?"

          As long as there is profit in bundling software, there will be bundling of software. In fact, the revenue from bundling is considerably more substantial and stable than the revenues from users. You don't think Adobe is offering this bundling to Google for free do you?!?!

          B.

      • Re:Obnoxious (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 )
        I am not a Google user and Adobe can't dare to bundle anything with programs my segment uses. Also I am on OS X , thank God there is no "toolbar mechanism" on OS X (yet!)

        Why I am reading story and comments? For my entertainment...

        Some people were really bugged by Adobe displaying tiny banners in their "Reader", a thing which they give freely. It was plugging into MS Office or something. As this is Google, nobody gets bugged by a "toolbar" (seen its privacy policy?!) coming with Adobe applications and even d

        • I am not a Google user and Adobe can't dare to bundle anything with programs my segment uses. Also I am on OS X , thank God there is no "toolbar mechanism" on OS X (yet!)

          Apple isn't much better with their "bundling" of software. In order to install iTunes in Windows, you are forced to install Quicktime aswell. Supposedely because iTunes uses Quicktime to play songs?!. They could have just included a quicktime dll in iTunes if iTunes really did use some quicktime technology to play mp3s. But instead, they

          • Their Quicktime division is "evil" but for this thing you can't blame them. To install iTunes for windows you really need Quicktime since most of that download is Quicktime framework for windows itself.

            Quicktime Player.exe , that thing is just a small wrapper. iTunes is entirely quicktime.

            The "tray" application? Blame the coder of OS it works in. As long as they compete in mafia ways by stealing extensions from programs, both Apple and Realnetworks will have those "lets see if windows media player stole my

          • Re:Obnoxious (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Tim C ( 15259 )
            Not only Quicktime - if you install iTunes, it installs an iPodHelper service too, set to start up automatically. I would understand if it asked ("Do you have an iPod? No - ok, I won't install the service, just go to Tools -> Options -> ... if you ever buy one; they're great!"), but it doesn't. There's a word for software that silently installs components that take up resources even when the main program isn' running...
      • Google Toolbar is a good program for those who use IE

        It's only good if you turn off all the spyware features that send every URL you visit to an advertising company's profiling servers. (The advertising company is Google, BTW.)
        • If people doesn't have problem with such things, they should install Alexa toolbar instead of Google. I am not kidding.
      • I find bundling software to be acceptible on one condition. The default state for the check box should be off so that I don't accidentally install it.

        Believe it or not, not everyone knows all of the software available to them at any given time. As such, advertising like this (which is essentially what bundling software is, advertising for the bundled program) does have a useful purpose. If someone offers me a program, I like the look of it and I install it and enjoy it, then I am thankful for whoever offere
      • In theory I agree with you but in practice there is a HUGE difference based on what is being installed--for instance..

        Yahoo toolbar is a menace to society. I stopped using anything related to Yahoo simply for fear of that monster being installed. It's a annoying, hard to get rid of and generally useless.

        Google's toolbar, however, is one I actually choose to install. It lets you reconfigure it to hide whatever you don't want to see, many of the options are useful and certain things like the spell check are
      • I just installed Flash and Shockwave on someone else's computer and was very annoyed that Macromedia was pushing Yahoo Toolbar. The toolbar option was pre-checked. This lead to a discussion about how I started using Google in the first place. Google just gave me a search box on their website when everyone else was pushing "portals" at you. Google gave you what you wanted and nothing more. Now, they're pulling this shit. If I want a toolbar, I'll download a toolbar. It's time to shape up, Google.
    • Right, you mean that they should just sit down and watch as M$ will once again leverage their monopoly on the OS market and plaster MSN search all over the place on IE7, and the clueless 99% will just use that instead of yahoo or google.

      Besides, if I read correctly, this applies only to IE users. Well, if someone is still using IE, I bet he will have to deal with far more many bad things than google toolbar. An extra search box won't make hell of difference.

    • Re:Obnoxious (Score:3, Informative)

      by zlogic ( 892404 )
      Actually, Google have done this before - DivX used to have Google Toolbar included, and now even Google Desktop is bundled with it.
    • That's one reason why I use linux. Every software is in its own package. Every install is the same, with no wizards or checkboxes or registration or serial #s or expiry date (even some freeware I've downloaded for Windows has 'expired', requiring me to get the new version which may not behave the way I want).

  • Thanks, but no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kirun ( 658684 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:34AM (#15599947) Homepage Journal
    Although it's nice of them to helpfully include carefully selected sotware from premier partners (where the careful selection process is making sure it's the highest bidder), even if they promise to be really, really, good [adobe.com] and not create a bloated installer, perhaps they could get the message that if I'd wanted to install X, I would have. If I'm installing a player so you can make massive profits selling people the encoder, I shouldn't have to look at ads as well. The fact that they've had to create a FAQ telling people why they shouldn't be annoyed suggests they know this.
    • perhaps they could get the message that if I'd wanted to install X, I would have. If I'm installing a player so you can make massive profits selling people the encoder, I shouldn't have to look at ads as well.

      I've already started to give them the message by uninstalling Adobe reader and installing the FoxIt PDF Reader [foxitsoftware.com]. It's a small download, doesn't come bundled with anything, doesn't ask you to update EVERY time you open it, and has no splash screen. It just opens a PDF and displays it - really, really

  • I'm holding my breath... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dasch ( 832632 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @06:59AM (#15599992)
    ... until Google helps Mozilla further develop the SVG implementation for Firefox 3, and switches Google Maps over to SVG, as well. Imagine being able to show and hide selected layers -- roads, highways, burger joints, bicycle paths, etc. dynamically, while zooming smoothly? The satellite imagery could just be another layer onto which the others could be placed. GMap-powered bike rides, anyone?

  • Business necesity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by javilon ( 99157 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @07:22AM (#15600014) Homepage
    With all the cheating going on (scrappers, link farms, google bombing, etc...), maybe they push the bar so much because Google needs some extra information apart from links to build their pagerank results, and they get it from statistics gathered from googlebar users.

  • Is it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Konster ( 252488 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @07:32AM (#15600031)
    Is it time for an Open Source Search Engine?

    We already have a *pretty* good free OS in the form of Linux, we already have *pretty* good apps for it. Why settle for Google or MSN Search or Yahoo search or whatever? I should think that a massively distributed OS search engine should do pretty well.

    Forgive the semantics, focus on the idea.

    Use a bit torrent style method of sharing bandwidth. Say one lonely PC can store 100mb of data, 15mb of which can be shared on the internet per day to save end-user costs x the number of Linux installs, prolly not a bad use for distributed computing and bandwidth sharing if I have ever heard of one.

    Open Source Search Engine.

    The time is now. :)

    • Re:Is it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chabil Ha' ( 875116 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @11:14AM (#15600562)
      I think that the FOSS Search Engine would die a quick death. Here's why: Part of making a search engine is obfuscating the algorithm used to produce results. Sure, we all know that be putting in key words, etc. in the meta-tags helps the spiders find and catalogue a site. However, there are measures in place to help reduce the amount of search engine spamming that occurs. This algorithm isn't 100% effective, but it does a pretty good job. Now, if you have that algorithm out in the open, the incentive for not only spammers, but those you honestly want higher results are going to leverage that knowledge to artificially boost their page ranking. This kind of defeats the purpose of 'organic' search results. This means that the crap ends up coming up at the top, translating into a dissatisfied customer.
      • Why can't search engines have user feedback... Click on a link that is obviously search engine spam, or that returns different results than what was fed to the spider? Click this link! If it gets enough 'no' votes it's thrown to the end of the list and has to work it's way back up. A little bit of tuning on how many 'no' votes a page has to get over any particular period of time, and it should be rare indeed for people to see search-spam.
    • Use a bit torrent style method of sharing bandwidth.

      The latency for receiving any specific bit of data over these types of protocols is very high compared to what we're used to from the big name search engines.

      Think of how (not) fast Coral Cache pages are... Sure, they're faster than the site you're trying to get to that went down 40 minutes ago, but they're damned slow compared to most average websites. Peer to Peer hosting of interactive content would have the same problems... and that's before you get in
    • If you spend monumental amounts of effort developing a web spider, search engine ranking system, and then a way to distribute the content over an arbitrary number of nodes on the Internet (in essence, replicating in opene source Google's entire reason for being), THEN add automated peer discovery to that, you'll have a pretty sweet search engine. For a week. Then some enterprising person is going to figure out that they can control your search engine results by taking your open source enginge, modifying i
  • Adobe's Portable Document Format [wikipedia.org] has the potential to become the dominant player as a universal format meeting some of the requirements of an ODF. If Adobe keeps the entry price for generating pdfs low or nonexistant it could sell the sizzle, bells and whistles to make pdf a potential Windows Office killer.

    Agencies of many governments already use pdf and academica widely uses pdfs. The push for an Open Document Format could help Adobe advance pdfs as an alternative amenable to all.

    If Google is going to mov

    • Adobe's Portable Document Format has the potential to become the dominant player as a universal format

      No. It's great for displaying and printing, but basically impossible to edit (you can edit images, and change a word here and there, or fill out forms, but that's about it). It's wonderful for publishing, but useless for authoring or revision. You could embed a bunch of XML in it, and rebuild the PDF part every time you changed the text, but in that case you might as well just use the XML and render that

  • It stands to be completely unusable for ordinary users. It can't even save downloads to the desktop anymore.

  • Its a major annoyance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pl1ght ( 836951 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @07:54AM (#15600068)
    Its one more program you have to keep an eye out for when installing otherwise "free" software from adobe and etc. I put it in the adware/spyware category because if you dont actively pay attention to your next/next/next clicking during install you will get a shitty google toolbar slapped onto your browser which is really annoying...

  • I'd rather... (Score:4, Funny)

    by flimflammer ( 956759 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @08:11AM (#15600099)
    No company adds stupid toolbars I'll never use to my machine.

  • After all the trouble Microsoft got in for bundling IE and Media Player with Windows, I would expect the people at Google (or Yahoo) to be a little smarter. Just how many million dollars do they actually want to get fined? I don't know about the USA, but the EU competition authorities do regard product bundling as an anti-competitive practice and illegal.

    And frankly, Microsoft had at least a decent case that integrating a web browser and a media player in an OS makes sense, but bundling a search engine wi

    • This comes up everytime and the difference to note is that Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist while Google/Adobe/Yahoo/etc is not. The rules of the game are different.
    • As I understand the EU doesn't like when one company bundles its product A with its product B to promote B with the monopoly or near-monopoly status of A. In this case, it's two different companies.
      It's like complaining that you get free magazines on your airplane flight. Or getting Wikipedia links posted related to the slashdot story. Even Adsense may be considered bundling because when you visit a website, you get a lot of related (or unrelated) links.

  • hmm?? firefox (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25, 2006 @09:04AM (#15600213)
    firefox bundles google search and defaults to google (..and makes millions) and no one on ./ says anything
    • Check with the people at /., maybe things are different there.
    • firefox bundles google search and defaults to google (..and makes millions) and no one on ./ says anything

      That's probably because Firefox doesn't have 90% of the browser market, doesn't come preinstalled with an operating system that accounts for 95% of the personal computer market, and so far never has engaged in blatant anti-competitive behavior.

  • Adobe Acrobat: The Intervention (Score:5, Funny)

    by rocjoe71 ( 545053 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @09:09AM (#15600231) Homepage
    Scene: Adobe Acrobat comes home after a hard day of making side-deals with other companies and binging on smaller applications. Once, Acrobat would have leapt up the stairs to reach his 2nd-floor apartment. Once upon a time this valued member of the community helped countless others read and share documents. But now, after years of bloat, Acrobat reaches his second floor apartment sweating and turning purple in the face. He wipes the sweat from his eyes and unlocks the door to his apartment to find all his friends there...

    Acrobat: Wha... what are all you guyes doing here?

    Photoshop: Acrobat, first we'd like to say the-- WE LOVE YOU... Everybody in this room loves you... And we're worried... about YOU.

    Acrobat: What's going on?

    Photshop: Acrobat, you have to stop this.

    Acrobat: Stop what? What do you mean "stop"? Stop what?

    Photoshop: Here, read this...

    Acrobat: Humm... RrrRRrrrrRrr... Humm... Would you mind if I just call the office and make sure there's no updates before I read you this document? No? Ok, but there' could be a security issue.... Hummm... RrRrrRRrr... Hummm...

    Foxit: Give me that! [Snatches document from Acrobat's hands] You know what this says, Adobe? It says you've put on weight... AGAIN. No one can remember the last time you were under 10Mb! And at this rate, you'll be pushing 30Mb by the end of the year!

    Acrobat: Hey! Today's document rendering world is COMPLEX, I've just be putting on a little extra CODE to get the job done!

    Foxit: Oh that is such bullshit Acrobat! I do nearly everything you do, and I'm still under 3Mb!

    Photoshop: Acrobat, it's time you admitted you have a problem. For starters, you're going to have to stop haning around with those Google and Yahoo kids, they're TROUBLE.

    Foxit: ...and here's some reading material on how to curb your bloat [drops large pile of documents in Acrobat's lap]

    Photoshop: Foxit, oh god no! Acrobat hasn't been able to manage documents of that size for years, he's so out-of-shape! What have you done? Call 9-1-1!

    End scene

  • 600 x 768 web pages.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @09:33AM (#15600287) Homepage Journal
    with all the damn tool bars trying to install themselves we're going to have to change our pages to be best viewed at 600 pixels in height.

    google, msn, yahoo, viewport?, and others. Whats left for the webpage itself?

  • Google's Target Audience (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Google doesn't need to bundle the Google Toolbar for other browsers as well, because users of alternative browsers already know that Google is better than Yahoo or MSN, so they use Google. The computer illiterate, who use Internet Explorer because they don't even know that other browsers exist, are the target audience.
    • In your rush to slam IE users, you've made a rather absurd argument. The computer illiterate don't use IE because they don't know how to use a computer. It's like saying that the illiterate read the Da Vinci Code instead of War and Peace. Perhaps you should have said "right-thinking computer experts" instead.

  • Google should pay me a "significant amount" (Score:4, Funny)

    by giafly ( 926567 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @10:04AM (#15600371)
    ... because know those $billions that Google makes? I think it's a zero-sum game because they load equivalent costs onto users and companies like mine -
    • User: "Your Website stopped working. It's a disaster".
    • Me: "Do you have Google toolbar installed?".
    • User: "No, I've not installed anything".
    • Me: "Because if you've installed Google toolbar, you need to click to allow popups".
    • User: "I just told you, I've not got Google toolbar. It's a bug in your program".
    • I waste hours trying to sort out the bug, without success.
    • User: "Hey, I fixed my problem, it was Google toolbar all along."
  • ....we DO NOT WANT bundled shit with the applications we intend to download. This is like someone giving you a side order of sh1t sandwich with your order at dinner. Complete asshattery that drives me nuts. I don't care how 'useful' it may be...let me decide if I want to install another app.

  • Competition (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ajehals ( 947354 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @10:49AM (#15600489) Journal
    Microsoft looks like it could be getting into bed with Yahoo [slashdot.org] (to compete with Google apparently) whilst adding technology that mimics PDF functionality (XPS the XML Paper Standard [microsoft.com] (that competes with Adobe)) into the core of its next OS. Now Adobe gets into bed with the company that is giving Microsoft a headache over search and online applications. This could be a very clear case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend....

    Hmmmm, This is either simply Google bidding the most for their tool bar to be bundled with some very widely used software, or the battle lines within the IT sector are getting a little more defined.

    Personally I would prefer to be able to download and install an application that does whatever the job is I want doing; without installing any other "useful" application's - regardless of which "well selected" partner it comes from. However from a non technical perspective this may well become interesting.

    Now to me it is starting to look as though Microsoft are feeling less in control of their ability to "lock" users to their software. This appears to be the reason for the plethora of new proprietary file formats that they can force into the main stream with Vista. It will be interesting to see if there is any fight against the formats or if the rest of the software industry will carry out its own embrace and extend exercise... After all this time round they are not providing "new" functionality but rather revamping existing standards and encroaching on other companies areas of expertise.

    Google should add a decent dedicated document search feature that is purely an index of ODF, PDF, Rich/Plain Text etc.. and exclude XPS until it sees mainstream use at least, and offer links to - the original document - html version - adobe acrobat / open office. Im not certain if Adobe will or even should, but I would also like to see adobe and open office support the XPS standard for reading, if not necessarily for export.

  • What happened to.. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by jo42 ( 227475 )
    .."Do No Evil"?


    Bundling Google Toolbar with other products is evil in my book. I don't want Google's toolbar. I don't want Yahoo's toolbar. I don't want their crap on my machine.

  • Will this come bundled with Flash? (Score:4, Informative)

    by assassinator42 ( 844848 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @12:12PM (#15600811)
    It only says it will come bundles with Shockwave, not flash. Yet as I look at their site now, the Flash download page includes an option for the Yahoo toolbar, while the Shockwave download does not. I'm not sure if it asks you to download it later along, though. Please, news writers, do some reasearch about what you're talking about. The Flash and Shockwave players are two different things. The later, last time I checked, not available on Linux, and likely never will be.

  • Claim dial-up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by a_greer2005 ( 863926 ) on Sunday June 25, 2006 @01:16PM (#15601072)
    If you dont want the crapware in Adobe reader and shock wave, there is usually a "dial;up users" button on the download page, click that, and Reader is suddenly ~5MB...
  • I ran into a video the other day that was some obscure divx format, so I decided to install the "official" divx software. I didn't read the installer super-closely, but on the 'select components' step, I unchecked everything I didn't want.

    But wait! Lo and behold, Google Toolbar for Firefox was installed. And Google Desktop Search. Yeah, just start indexing my entire drive without asking, thanks! I should've known something was up with a download size of 14 megs.

    And yes, I know about ffdshow and all tho
  • What (else) does Google Toolbar actually do? What might it do?

    I'm serious. I've been an avid user of Google since early 1999 or so, and Gmail since a few months after it came out. Like many technologists, I am somewhat of a Google evangelist.

    What worries me is that Google records one's clickstream as one searchs and I can only presume that Google Toolbar could easily be modified to "phone home" about anything of interest to Google (or the NSA), particularly about what it finds on your local hard dr

  • I already knew about the flash thing, because the other day I had to get the latest version to view some web art. I can't recall exactly what else tried to install Google toolbar, but I know I've seen others. I always say "NO" to Google's spyware. Yeah, yeah. Google is a bunch of intellectuals with high ideals and a philosophy. So was communism.

    The only thing that pisses me off more is Quacktime installing iTunes. I've got Yahoo Music Unlimited, I was quite concerned that it would step on my player

  • Tried to download the Google Toolbar for FireFox yesterday and was presented with a message that they don't support Windows 9X. Funny thing is that the GTB for IE runs just fine on 9X. Leads me to wonder just how much Google really is trying to move into all available markets.

  • Adobe assault (Score:2, Interesting)

    by deevnil ( 966765 )
    I broke down and put the acroread application on my computer because the xpdf and stuff never seem to work right and it was great and all.. Well... I was over at a friends, an XP guy that didn't have the viewer on his XP box kind of in the fasion that I refuse to run the flash plugin. I was showing his kid (12 yrs old) a pdf, but I needed to install their reader and I says, "OK, check this out..." while it's installing. The goddamned thing installs and then starts hijacking the media/image viewing defaults

Slashdot Top Deals

THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE

Close