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Thursday, June 30, 2005 5:54 PM PT Posted by Harry McCracken
More on Microsoft and Claria
Lots of coverage of this possible acquisition--and nothing I've seen so far has been positive. Or within a country mile of positive, for that matter.Here's Ben Edelman's take.
David Coursey of eWeek says he's "always thought the Gator folks belonged in jail."
Spyware Suzi of Spyware Warrior says she's in shock.
Former PC World editor Ed Bott, who discusses the issue here and here puts it nicely: "The only way it makes sense is if Microsoft buys the company, fires everyone involved with it, has their buildings exorcised, and rewrites every line of code in their product."
Meanwhile, a PC World colleague who shall remain nameless mused that Microsoft might follow up a Claria purchase with some sort of partnership with North Korea.
Anyone out there want to raise their hand and tell us why it would be a good idea for Bill Gates to get in bed with Gator?
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Step 1: Buy them out then look at thier code.
Step 2: Fix the window holes that Gator expoited.
Step 3: Shut down gator forever without the fear that someone else will rise to take it's place.
A simple 3 step process that would make the world a better place all thanks to microsoft.
Purchase Claria/Gator, and then either (1) commence a restraint of trade and unfair competitive practices law suit against Google for blocking Microsoft's (Gator's) pop-up ads, or (2) reserve the ability to do pop-ups via Gator to itself while completely blocking this possibility in the new release of Windows.
Microsoft needs to get a fang into Google somehow. And of course, Microsoft likes a good monopoly wherever it can get one.
I wonder how Microsoft will spin this in a positive way.
As to the comment made by Epic (above)...your scenario is dripping B.S. all over my monitor. C'mon, Microsoft is not the altruistic entity you (apparently) believe it to be. MS is NOT dropping $500 million to "make the world a better place." Do you work for MS? I suspect that you do. This is BAD.
Isn't Gator / GAIN responsible for proactive firewalls like ZoneAlarm? Even without a firewall a few simple entries in your hosts file can defeat spyware / adware.
But the question remains... will MS make it mandatory for included spyware to contact their server else cripple the os?? oh boy...
Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.
I think that when MS Antispyware stops blocking Claria products, effectively ensuring that users will have adware on their machines from MS, it is proof enough that Bill Gates is the antichrist... seriously, to do this with no mention of why to the obviously concerned MS consuming public is clearly part of Gates' promise to "make malware a thing of the past" when Longhorn is released. The MS Gator will infest your machine and kick out all other malware so that you only have one kind(g) of malware on your machine... MS Malware