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Overhype

by Carlo Longino

Mon, Apr 3rd 2006 8:32am





Claria Swears It's Going Straight

from the we-mean-it,-really dept

A couple weeks ago, Claria said it was going straight and giving up the adware business in favor of a new product that builds a personalized home page for users based on their surfing history, or, as SiliconBeat puts it, "leveraging traffic-snooping expertise". The company is certainly working hard to give the impression that they've changed their stripes, but, as some critics are noting, many people are unlikely to be comfortable with having something monitor everything they surf, even if Claria says it doesn't track users' personal information -- and they may be doubly shy of letting Claria do it, given the company's past. Perhaps a bigger question, though, is will the product succeed? Asking users to keep an application running just to serve them up a personalized home page doesn't seem like a great tradeoff, while there's little evidence that surfing behavior is actually a better criteria with which to set up a personalized page than simply letting users choose the content they want.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    Ben, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 9:43am

    Hmmmm...

    Sounds fishy to me. But thats just cause i've had to deal with them before. oh well. I'm curious to see if they will come and leave another comment just like the last time Techdirt wrote about Gat...i mean Claria.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    SuperJudge, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 9:44am

    Anybody...

    Anybody who falls for this probably deserves the wake-up call.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 9:48am

    Even if they went legit, I would still boycott their products as punishment for past bad behavior.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    MrCrispy, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:07am

    Thank you Claria!!!

    Wow, thank you so much! I've always wanted someone to monitor what I do on the internet and use up more of my system resources. I could never imagine making my own personalized home page on one of the many sites that offer such a service. I don't know what I would have done without you guys. Oh, and by the way, GO TO HELL.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:20am

    Free Porn

    Will it suggest lots of free porn sites for me?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    JL, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:22am

    No thanks...

    Sounds too fishy to ever be accepted. I'd rather keep my homepage simple and just have it set to Google. Googles personalized homepage isn't too bad either...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    Pariah, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:35am

    No Second Chances

    No, nope, negatory.

    No second chance for the scum who unleashed Gator on the world.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    Numberonewithabullet, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 10:44am

    Gator, Claria, a rose by any other name

    Still stinks. I bought new hard drives and lost tons of data getting rid of gator, i hope their servers spontaneously combust.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  
    identicon
    mr. rogers, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 11:29am

    call the cops

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  10.  
    identicon
    Bill, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 11:32am

    Re: No thanks...

    Google's personalized homepage rocks. But try this - sign up for Fortune.com - one of the three recent links to stories says, "Why Google will falter in 2006" - then you click on the link and they have blocked the link to the story.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  11.  
    identicon
    mr. rogers, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 11:35am

    call the cops

    SOMEONE STOLE MY E-WALLET. i spent a few years working on home pc's and found that most people who had gator asked for it. not that i'm saying people deserve spyware. funny how microsoft antispyware never identified claria. i guess not that funny the only thing it does identify is firefox. free pestpatrol for everyone!!!!!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  12.  
    identicon
    Martha, Apr 3rd, 2006 @ 12:44pm

    Re: Re: No thanks...

    Check out Fortune's site - I can't find the article on a cursory glance through. Maybe it was an April Fool's thing? Although I don't see why google would do that...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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