I just came across a disturbing article over at Marketing Pilgrim that explains what appears, at least in the case of this one incident, to be something pretty dirty.
Have any of you all experienced this? Have you been through the update and not had this "problem"? If you have, or have not, can you please share your experience here?
Posted by: Ben Basson | January 12, 2007 6:14 PM
I have to admit this sort of conduct from Yahoo doesn't really surprise me.
Posted by: ant | January 12, 2007 6:24 PM
Not sure about the IE7 upgrade because I have already installed it when I last installed Yahoo messenger in my computer, but I certainly had to be more cautious because there are a lot of unwelcome changes marked by default including installing a lot of other yahoo stuff and changing home page, search engines and toolbars. This people just don't get it.
Posted by: percy | January 12, 2007 6:45 PM
The "industry-wide" practice they speak of is that the installer asks the user what they want to do, and has clear explanations for each option. If Yahoo! is not doing this during setup, then it is not the "industry-wide" practice.
Even MSN Messenger asks politely if you'd like to change browser settings!
Posted by: Daniel | January 12, 2007 7:53 PM
This is exactly why I stopped using a lot of Yahoo services. Instead of winning people over by creating must have products, they strong arm old fashioned and dirty. I hear even NOW that they are trying to circumvent AdBlockers using javascript.
Posted by: Omega X | January 13, 2007 1:49 AM
Many (but maybe not every?) time when I've installed IE7 on a machine, it changed my default browser to IE. Does this count? Because it REALLY annoyed me.
And speaking of Yahoo, I remember that for a long time I had tough times with Adobe Update. Clicking on the upgrade automatically dropped in a Yahoo Toolbar installation, and trying to get rid of it didn't work.
And when I installed MSN plus, their "agree to terms and conditions?" choice sneakily included an agreement to install some nasty toolbar-search facilities. In actual fact, it was optional but you had to realise this and click "No" to agreeing to terms and conditions. Must catch so many people out because they're used to those EULAs.
This sort of behaviour is going to drive people away from trusting technology and technology firms. I've commented on that kind of thing on my blog: how technological literacy is driving the knows and know-nots apart further and further.
Posted by: Lionel | January 13, 2007 9:38 AM
wy don't you try running the install and see for yourself? There are preferences right in the installer for all of this stuff, so I don't see what the issue is.
It's no different than the Sun Java installer installing the Google toolbar by default.
Posted by: Neil | January 13, 2007 1:24 PM
I thought I'd see what the effect on Firefox is.
Here's what happened:
Posted by: Mr Lizard | January 13, 2007 5:27 PM
Neil, I don't have a Windows machine right now so I can't really test that, hence my request for information.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | January 13, 2007 8:54 PM
Yahoo Widgets does (or at least did) something along the same lines. This kind of practise is totally, utterly wrong, and fortunately not very common. Yahoo can hardly claim that everyone else does it because they simply don't.
Still, I guess this makes a change from Sony pissing everyone off.