The Sleazy Business Of Adware

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the sneakily-profitable dept

Business Week is running some stories looking at the business side of the adware world, where Claria and WhenU are making lots of money. The article is fairly balanced in pointing out how angry people are about the way in which these products get installed. Claria defends themselves by showing studies saying that most people who have Gator on their computer know they have it. That’s misleading (how typical…) because, just the fact that anyone doesn’t realize how they got a program on their computer should be a warning sign that something is wrong. Even worse (much, much worse, actually) is that for all those people who “know” they have Gator on their machine, most don’t realize what it actually does — and when they find out, they want it off. Once again, the problem isn’t in what Gator does, so much as how it gets installed and how sneaky they are about admitting what it does. Meanwhile, it’s also quite telling that almost none of Gator’s advertisers were willing to talk to Business Week about the experience — showing how risky they know it is to be associated with the company. The article does mention, however, that a fairly large percentage of Gator revenue comes from a partnership with Yahoo. No wonder Yahoo’s overhyped anti-spyware technology doesn’t remove Gator. The Business Week piece also includes a sidebar talking to an investor considering whether or not to buy into the Claria IPO, comparing it to Napster: saying both are companies that look good on paper, but risk being shut down by legal problems. There’s one huge difference: the people who used Napster wanted to use it. If you’re going to invest in a company, doesn’t it make sense to focus on one that has people who like using it, rather than ones whose users can’t figure out why it’s ruining their computing experience?