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Yahoo Using Dirty Tactics to Switch Google & Firefox Users?
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sigriffin
over 5 years ago about Yahoo
Andy Beal warns people about Yahoo!’s attempt to take over their desktops:
“…a recent upgrade to Yahoo Messenger includes an innocuous ‘auto-update’ option. When the user gives Yahoo permission to ‘update’ – what they think is just Yahoo Messenger – the updater… then proceeds to hijack many browser preferences – including search engine settings.”
Firstly, the updater associates all web links with Internet Explorer instead of your default browser (very annoying for Firefox / Opera users!). Secondly, it pops up an ambiguous error message telling you that your search settings have been changed and that you can either “fix” them or “allow change”. Thinking that they’re about to lose their browser defaults, most people will click “fix settings”. Upon doing so however, they’ll find that their default homepage has been switched to Yahoo! And for its final trick, the updater switches IE’s default search engine to Yahoo! without your permission. Nice work :-(
When Andy complained about this to Yahoo!, the response he received (from Yahoo! spokesperson Terrell Karlsten) said “This is an industry-wide practice.” Great stuff. So if everyone else is doing it, that makes it OK does it? What would his Mum say? “If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would Yahoo!?”
(see also: Etre)
This is a story about Yahoo
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Comments
Industry practice huh? Does gtalk do any of the above-mentioned settings invasions?
posted by ryan over 5 years ago
Industry-wide practice VS Industry-leading practice
This may be part of the reason, YHOO is only $30 and GOOG is $500. Go figure.
posted by soccerTOOLsu over 5 years ago
Hopefully Google takes the high road here and doesn’t respond in kind.
posted by Loren (verified representative for dotherightthing.com) over 5 years ago
I don’t think Google will ever do this. If only because it promises “Not to be evil.” This kinda seems slightly evil to me.
posted by kelly over 5 years ago
No, not like a ghost – but “boo” as in “bad move Yahoo”. I hate tactics that try to switch my defaults. Mess with my search engine of choice, and you’re rm’d from my system.
posted by Robert over 5 years ago
Dreadful practices – and as for it being standard practice in the industry? If you count the ‘badware’ pushers as industry, then yes – it is. Even Microsoft tells you clearly what each option is going to do.
posted by aBitGone over 5 years ago
i agree with all the comments here—customer trust needs to be valued, not stomped on.
anyway, i would like to point out that per-share price does not matter – total market value that multiplies it by number of shares does.
yahoo is worth $38 billion ($28/share) google is worth $150 billion ($495/share) berkshire hathaway is worth $165 billion ($106,700 /share)
share price is only psychological and relates to behavioral economics. share splits yield a 5% rise, for no fundamental reason than perceived “affordability”
thank you class – finance 101 is done for today.
posted by RPaulH over 5 years ago
yet another reason to stay with google
posted by geek27 over 5 years ago
As long as white collars try and run the Internet, we will never really see its potential. Hijacking is just bad, and sad.
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posted by adverteasement over 5 years ago
Dirty Trick!
posted by Niloofar over 5 years ago
Why do they bring down people’s trust like that..
posted by ilkeryoldas over 5 years ago
about google… refer to one of my favorite bloggers… Danah Boyd’s article a practice broken
But anyway, a confusing process, seemingly deceptive in intent, is a sign of desperation or possibly malice- simply bad customer service. Company’s with bad customer service don’t usually do to well… I think?
posted by MigsDavis over 5 years ago
Yahoo! seem to be getting naughtier
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posted by david28078 over 5 years ago
I hated this when I did my Yahoo Messenger update, and removed all those junks immediately. It is disappointing to see Yahoo doing this. I thought “only” Microsoft does that.
posted by richard over 5 years ago
流氓行为
posted by llnull over 5 years ago
I do agree that this is a nasty way to fool the novice user and hijack his browser settings but then again, I also know that IE has been doing this for ages !
posted by gopher over 5 years ago
that is stupid and smart. The stupid thing is that some people hate behavior like that. the smart thing is some people do not mind, especially people who use computer as a tool, they do not really understand what yahoo’ve done, they just simply accepted everything that is not a virus.
posted by rexebin over 5 years ago
This is one of the many things that really get me angry while on the internet. Companies using behavior like that is 100% inappropriate, especially a company like Yahoo, a company who many see as a “good” company. I didn’t know about this until I read this here. This is a reason I don’t use IE anymore as well!
posted by Michaelblake over 5 years ago
This just goes to show the difference in corporate culture at places like Yahoo vs. Google. We’ve all felt it for a very long time and maybe just not been able to pinpoint what doesn’t feel right about certain companies. It’s their entire culture which comes out to show itself in actions like this.
posted by dansage over 5 years ago
This happened to me. I could NOT get rid of the Yahoo redirection. I used Hijackthis, malware, spyware programs, to no avail. I had to uninstall Internet Explorer 7.0, re-install 6.0 and NO, I don’t have YAHOO MESSENGER – I switched it all to Trillian. I suggest you check this out, http://www.trillian.cc/. And the best thing, you can use it with Tor and other http overides.
posted by sleeknbasic over 5 years ago
It really chaps my hide when ANY software package sets preferences to what they think they should be. (Are you listening, Microsoft?)
posted by belmonster over 5 years ago
And they are supposedly trying to endear themselves to more people! Nice way of going about it.
posted by Theo over 5 years ago
”..the updater associates all web links with Internet Explorer”
That’s reason enough to avoid Yahoo Messenger for me!
posted by DragonFly over 5 years ago
Its obvious Yahoo has been losing big chunks of market share (revenue) to Google. But, trying to win it back at the expense of their customers is flat out wrong. This strategy is simply about generating short term advertising revenue, but alienating your customer base in the process makes no sense! Ahem, is it really that hard to do the right thing?
posted by Marshall over 5 years ago