Here comes the Ask Toolbar again

[muckshifter]

In a trend that is increasingly popular, Symantec will be bundling a version of the Ask Toolbar with the upcoming release of Norton 360. This will add to the plethora of toolbars already on people’s systems.

Donna is ****ed and has added Symantec to the list of vendors barred from Calendar of Updates.

The toolbar incorporates Symnatec’s site checking, which in at least one test, did give me some odd results — Zango is whitelisted, while Kephyr.com, a legit site, is blacklisted.

Whatever, chalk it up to beta software.

Ask has been on a tear to get their toolbar installed with leading companies, with their business development folks contacting everyone. The economics are strong — $1.00 per install, but despite the tempting money, there are quite a few companies that have turned them down flat — Bill P (one of a dying breed of high-integrity software execs) and Lavasoft among them.

Is Ask so terrible? Well, they have a history, which to their credit, has really been cleaned up. Perhaps it’s unfair that some of us in the business have long memories. But now that Symantec has effectively lowered the bar, expect a lot more of this type of bundling by companies anxious to add more dollars to a tight P&L. This type of thing certainly improves short-term results, but in the long term, it is brand-destructive.

I suppose some of the bigger questions are: a) should toolbars such as these be pre-selected during install, b) should your security product add more to your system than it needs to accomplish its goal of securing your system and c) should your security product push your searches toward a specific search provider that they have a monetary relationship with?

I suppose this debate will be raging for some time.

Alex Eckelberry

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/here-comes-ask-toolbar-again.html

 

[floppybootstomp]

I detest having something I don't want foisted onto me

Symantec lost the plot about 4 or 5 years ago but I was surprised to see an option to install the Ask toolbar during the installation of patches for both Nero 6 & 8.

Still, at least it was an option where I could choose not to install the damned thing.

That lowered Nero's esteem in my eyes and that, coupled with their agressive sales policy and their habit of bringing out a new version of Nero around every nine months, means that version 8 will be the last version I buy.

And whilst I'm ranting against Nero, V8.0 has to be activated online which means Nero can only be installed on one machine. When I bought Nero 6 - which I still use with Win XP - I could install it on as many machines as I liked.

And another thing - in Nero 8 when I'm burning an audio compilation, when I add the audio files it always puts the last track listed as the first track. If I should forget this quirk and don't drag the top file to the bottom, it usually results in a wasted CD-R.

None of the patches issued have solved this problem. And now they're trying to sell me Nero 9 by bombarding me with e-mails.

I like Nero, I've used their software for many years but gradually, with one thing after another, they have lost a future customer in me.

 

[Ian]

Not good I can understand if people like CCleaner add an option to install a search toolbar in the installation process, as it's a free application that needs to be paid for some how (and it's only an optional addition)... however bundling a toolbar with a PAID FOR application seems inappropriate (especially for AV software, which should be light on resources).

 

[krgrajeev]

just go to C:/ Documents and Setting/ (your user profile) / Start menu/ Startup/ program and remove the unknown entries from there. Before you do this, go to Folder Options and unhide the system files and folers. Then last search in C drive for the letter "tool bar" and check its location and details in Google. Remove it is required. Also run Smith fraud fix in Safe mode.