As if smart tags were not enough.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6897620.html

I hope this is the begining of the end for this company. This is too much. Hiding valid banners to show theirs? Time to change our terms of our site.

Chet that sucks. I have seen Gator packaged in with a few programs I have used Roger Wilco being one of them. I have uninstalled it or just not loaded it in the first place.

BTW, this bit about banner ads really pissed me off:

---

Quote:

One of the Web's first and most popular ad formats, banners were designed to offer an unobtrusive link that interested readers could click on to get more information about a product or service, usually on the advertiser's own Web site. But they didn't accomplish what advertisers had expected of them: The vast majority of surfers do not click on them. As a result, publishers have turned to bigger and more invasive formats such as pop-ups to squeeze more responses from visitors--and persuade reluctant marketers to once again advertise on the Web.

---

What the heck is the point of Gator anyway? No, I don't mean what it really does - we all know it's a commie spy. I mean why would someone actually desire to install the thing beyond blind stupidity and a knee-jerk reaction of clicking OK on a prompt?

I found this thing installed on one of the VMARS workstations down in the in-plant support office yesterday. I yanked it and burnt the registry just to be sure. What feature does gator claim to offer average Joe that would make it attractive?

It advertises itself as a browser enchancement and then never explains what that means. Early versions where next to impossible to uninstall. It sneaks itself onto many, many software installs. Now instead of blindly clicking okay 15 times to install something - you actually have to read everything and never choose typical install.

I have to think this might actually piss off enough big companies, microsoft, cnet, yahoo etc to actually get something done to stop it. While adding smart links is bad, actually taking away someone elses right to make money from their content and replacing it seems fishy.

Chet

Well... speaking of annoyance and advertising:

http://www.classicgaming.com

Let it load, count to 5, and prepare to be treated to the single most annoying advertising gimmick I've *EVER* seen.

I'll pay you $1 to let me know when they take that down, because I don't want to have to go there and be subjected to it in order to check.

Holy crap. That is annoying. Big floating shoe. Yuck!

That is an eyeblaster ad. It uses dhtml to deliver the ad so it gets around ad blockers.

That is a poorly designed one. We ran one for the terrible movie monkey bones on POE. It was the monkey popping up from various points and then it farted out brandon fraisers face and some text - but you could click a close button. The poe crowd didn't really hate the ad, but as with all movies that ugo pushes - they hated the movie.


Chet

>I hope this is the begining of the end for this company.

Clearly illegal. It will eventually be stopped when someone affected gets annoyed enough to do something about it.

Stefan

What about that ISP service that promises to strip ads? Is that illegal? I'm guessing that their stance is that anything that passes through their servers they can modify?

Also, Norton Internet Security blocks most ads. You still get them, but they're whited out. I tested it but went back because I felt guilty.

-Andrew

It's one thing for a user to block ads. I doubt that's illegal. You can argue about the ethical conduct of knowingly blocking ads while still reaping the benefits of the site's content, but I doubt it's illegal.

I'm talking about an ISP that strips banners from all HTML pages that come through its servers. I'm wondering if that's illegal?

"I'm talking about an ISP that strips banners from all HTML pages that come through its servers. I'm wondering if that's illegal?"

Which ISPs actually do this?

I have no idea of the legality of it, but I wonder if it even makes sense as an option. It seems like a really bad idea, and not something I'd want to sign up for. I dislike ads as much as the next person, but I don't want my ISP to sensor the web for me.

You guys are seriously pissed about this ad thing? No kidding? I'm completely ambivilant. Who reads ads anyhow? Who cares if the ad I'm not reading is covered by another ad I'm not going to read?

Bub, you truly feel guilty when you block a web site's ads? Wow.

It just doesn't affect me that way. The most ads impact my life is when I'm feeling generous and noble and click through one of the banner ads from a site I like. Rarely does this act of benevolence lead to my purchasing something. I have no idea if this helps the site one bit, but I like to imagine it does.

Tim

PS> If my occasional clicking though a banner ad doesn't help a site, and you've actually got cold hard facts to prove this, please do not let me know this information. I'm content and happy and really don't care.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm suddenly feeling very warm and genrous and want to click through on the Q23 banner ad.

"Bub, you truly feel guilty when you block a web site's ads? Wow."

Of course I do Tim! Look man, I'm a magazine freelance writer. Ads help my employers pay me. Ads keep my friends and allies in the industry secure in their jobs. I'm against anything that takes money out of the pockets of the people who pay me, or puts them out of work.

And beyond that, even as a consumer I'm not at all interested in the concept of micro-payments etc., I prefer the content be free and if that means the mild annoyance ads cause me. I'm all for it.

You use the Internet? You read the content? Ads are your friend too buddy! ;>
-Andrew

timelhajj a couple of things. Your not clicking or viewing - fine - who cares - but our sites are looking at 750,000 people. Out of that group, statistically we are going to get ads delivered to people who care, and I care whats associated with my sites. We have said no to advertisers. We have said no to delivery methods. Its our choice on how the page is presented to the reader, I don't give anyone the right to change my content. To block my ad to show another ad is making money off my content and my bandwidth without reimbursing me in anyway - that is where this differs from regular ad blocking.

Also if its not a big deal, can you pay our bandwidth for a month?

If I ever heard of an ISP stripping out banners, I would block their ipblock at our router. For that I assume I would be called childish or more - because when you are getting something for free, and then you must steal that - you tend to be the bitchiest whiniest little craps in the world.

Chet

Which ISP strips out banner ads? I can't remember. They used it as a selling point for their service, saying that pages load faster without the ads, etc.

I can't say that I feel a sense of outrage over Gator. I do think it's clearly wrong and should be stopped. It's also shortsighted. Gator's helping to worsen the advertising climate.

Chet, yeah, I see your point. If I had a site and was trying to make money off click through banner ads, I'd be pissed too. I was thinking more about Bub's guilt comment when I wrote.

But as a person who just enjoys using the web, fuck it, I'm not too worried or outraged about gator.

In fact, it probably has some small potential to make the web a better place for me by spurring along an ad free web, which I'd be thrilled about. Not to denigrate what your doing with your site, but there's gotta be a better way to make money from the web than waging war for my eyeballs, plastering popups and whatnot all over my desktop.

Not that I know what the solution is (God, please, lets not do micropayments again), but with the market the way it is now, it hardly seems to be working for anyone... even these people who created this gator program--stealing other folks banner ads just seems like such an enormously desperate, last ditch kind of act.

"In fact, it probably has some small potential to make the web a better place for me by spurring along an ad free web, which I'd be thrilled about."

"Bub, you truly feel guilty when you block a web site's ads? Wow."

Long live internet advertising! It really works! No, really! I swear!

"But as a person who just enjoys using the web, fuck it, I'm not too worried or outraged about gator."

If you really enjoy using the web, you might want to show some concern over its future. Content providers are having enough trouble trying to figure out how to make money on the web without this kind of bullshit. If you are truly looking forward to the day when you'll have to pay up front for web content, so be it. But if you are one of the many who will bitch and moan when that day comes... well, enjoy the irony.

On the ad replacement issue, I'm not sure how the legality works out. Unfortunately for content providers, the web was designed from day one so that the presentation of content could be manipulated on the client end. The HTML standard has changed a lot since then, but if Gator argues that they are merely providing users with a tool that allows them to view content in a different way, there is a lot of precedent to support that.

Wow, a lot of questions. I THINK I know a couple of answers.

First, blocking or stripping ads is perfectly legal. Advertisers pay to have their ads placed. This in no way obligates anyone not paid by the advertiser to actually look at the things. That includes, private parties, ISPs, etc.

Second, covering ads with your own...I believe that is illegal. We aren't talking about a random pop-up window here. We're talking about a program that purposefully detects banner ads on other sites and then obscures them from view by covering them with it's own ad. That violates the rights of that site, since it is not a consumer blocking ads, but a malicious (yep, I'm pretty sure they'll calll it that)3rd party that is unlawfully modifying the content given by their site.

It's the same arguement. You don't have to look at ads. But by the same token, I believe the advertiser has rights if they pay for an ad, and the site has rights about people pirating their ad space.

"If you really enjoy using the web, you might want to show some concern over its future."

Moi? I think a majority of people would have a hard time getting outraged by the ad blocking thing.

I think it would be more offensive to casual users that this program, not unlike a virus, is on their computer. But since it's not destroying files, I think it would be really hard to get people excited about it.

But I do agree with your general point: there is a change coming to the web--maybe it's that there's just not much money to be made as a content provider, or maybe it's what you say, "you'll have to pay up front for web content." I dunno.

On the Gator thing -- I know that Gator advertises it's "benefit" as being the fact that it tracks your information -- you fill out a couple of forms in Gator, with name, address, e-mail, credit card #s, etc... -- and it'll fill in those fields any time a webpage shows up with those fields, if you choose it to do so.

Way, way back when, I downloaded it and gave it a try -- I kept it installed for about ten minutes. And that was too long.

"Gator advertises it's 'benefit'"

Yeah, that's for the front door load, where the person who owns the computer actually makes a decision to install it. What's more likely and been discussed higher up the thread is that it's being bundled with other software and installing itself without most users realizing. Thus my comment that it's like a virus.

Besides, doesn't IE already have similar functionality, since like IE5 or so? Heh, maybe ad blocking/replacement will be in the feature set for IE6.5!

Oh, yeah, I agree. But someone up there asked what Gator did. I was just recalling my brief experience with them.

And, yeah, Win98ME AND IE5 have both had that option.

The IAB is thinking legal action against gator

www.internetnews.com/IAR/article/0,,12_869591,00.html
(sorry the forums slaughtered this url)


And now there are reports that they are selling words like rave and other common words to porn sites. Considering we have said no to advertisers on poe because of their content, this very much changes the arguement. Blocking ads is one thing, representing my site as a vehicle for porn sites is very much another.

Chet

"And now there are reports that they are selling words like rave and other common words to porn sites."

Chet, how does this work? Not to sound clueless, but I don't understand you message. Somehow your site can appear in search engines as a porn site when someone searches on a common word?

No. On our own site, if we had the word rave, it would link to a porn site by their smart link. So our content would be being used to promote porn sites. If someone using gator visited this forum, they would see the word rave as a hyperlink and it would be linked to a porn site, as if I was making the assumption all raves had to do with porn.

Not that we don't like porn, but we have always held firm to never, ever having anything to do with porn advertising. This goes completely against our wishes. For our sites it annoys us, but what about a pg or g site that has the word rave?

I think gator is just trying to run with this as hard as they can until they get shut down.

Chet

It does make for some interesting problems. When it comes to porn, I'm responsible for whatever I view on my PC. I've downloaded it. If I'm responsible for and can be punished for the content I download and view, why can't I allow a company like Gator to change the ads and use keywords as hyperlinks in the content I view?

"If someone using gator visited this forum, they would see the word rave as a hyperlink and it would be linked to a porn site, as if I was making the assumption all raves had to do with porn."

Ouch, this is especially bad considering that some of your best jokes at OMM are the way you hyperlink key words to websites and content. This would seriously mislead those of us in your audience who enjoy that.

-Andrew

I think the problem arises when you allow someone to automatically and without a case by case/item by item review, alter the your perception of someone else's content. Yes, you give Gator permission to change things, but from that point on you have no idea whether what you are viewing is what the site you're at put up, or something layered on by Gator. Now, you can argue that it's only you who is seeing this, and not the non-Gator public, but if you don't know what and when stuff is being altered, how can you know whether to attribute content/links to the site your at or to Gator?

Is that a problem? It is for me, in that while I can live with knowing that people will view our web content in myriad ways we didn't think of (fonts, sizes, etc.), it's harder to accept that people will see our content and our logos associated with other things we had no control over. Because even though the end user is choosing to modify his or her experience of the web, they are passively grafting their experience onto the experience we're offering, in a way that creates confusion in their mind concerning our content.

It's as if you installed a device on your TV that changed random words in the dialog of a Friends episode to obscenities. It'd be hilarious for a while, but leaving that aside, what happens when you tell someone about the episode where Monica told Phoebe to go fuck herself? That could start to create ideas about the show based not on the show but on one person's weird-ass modified version of the show. Same with a web modifier thingy.

Is this actionable? Dunno. Is it right? Dunno. Is it annoying as hell to anyone who has content or ads online? Yep.

I think the key word there is 'passively'. When you install Gator, does it say, "Along with installing this nifty auto-fill-out-form feature, we're going to cover up banner ads with our own ads, and turn certain words into smart tags"? Or is it written in little text at the bottom, and is the checkbox already checked for you? I think it's a question of how sneaky they are about doing it. If they're right up front, and the consumer understands what he's getting into (which I doubt is the case here), then it would be pretty hard to argue against it. On the other hand...

I teach some "welcome to internet" classes here in France, and I make a big point to tell people to read EVERYTHING on the screen carefully when downloading things. I told my wife the same thing, but that didn't stop her from downloading BonzaiBuddy. Getting rid of that program was a nightmare, plus it installs spyware and doesn't tell you.

I've seen some very tricky stuff, like, 'Check this box if you do not wish to not recieve our promotional materials'. I had to read the damm thing 3 times to figure out what it meant.

DeanCo--

Hey Deanco, I didn't know you were from France. What's with all the French game companies buying US game companies? Where are they getting all that money?

Someone told me that the French stock market was in love with game companies and pushed their stock prices up, and that's how they had so much money to throw around. Any truth in that?

"What's with all the French game companies buying US game companies? Where are they getting all that money?"

Well, I'll tell ya, Mark. Every time a French company sells a bottle of rare wine, or an exotic perfume, or a non-comprehensible-to-anyone-but-gallery-owners-and-even-they're-lying-about-it work of modern art, they stick a few francs in a "Buy A Video Game Company Cochon Bank". After a while it really builds up. Try it yourself the next time you sell a work of modern art, you'll see.

Seriously, you're asking the wrong guy. I have zero interest in video games as finance. I just like playing them.

"Someone told me that the French stock market was in love with game companies and pushed their stock prices up, and that's how they had so much money to throw around. Any truth in that?"

Once again, I'm unable to comment, other to say that there are an awful lot of sweeping generalizations in the above statement. I'm pretty sure the reality goes a bit deeper than that.

However, I CAN tell you that the localization for Max Payne is really not bad at all, which is saying something. The voices are mixed too far back, but as far as voice acting goes, it's a couple steps above the "complete shit" we usually get over here.

Now back to the Gator discussion? Or have we gone off on several tangents?

DeanCo--

"if we had the word rave, it would link to a porn
site by their smart link."

Now this is completely fucked up. Who in the heck would want this to occur on their computer as they surf the web? It's so insane it's almost funny. I'm almost tempted to grab a copy of Gator just to see how it bills the smart link feature--er, if it even tells you. I just can't imagine anyone knowingly foisting this upon themselves, so I'm really surprised it's got such a big install base.

I downloaded getright something like six months ago and Gator was bundled up in it I didnt know untill I installed it. I'm sure most people dont realize its on there computer untill to late. Oh and what was that about bonzai buddy? My mom downloaded that annoying bastard when I was away from home tell me more?

"I downloaded getright something like six months ago and Gator was bundled up in it I didnt know untill I installed it."

I heard Gator was bundled with AOL Instant Messenger, too. I know for sure it's bundled with GetRight (and installed by default..), which is VERY popular.

I just installed the new version 4.5 of GetRight, and it did not install Gator automatically. However, there was a seperate button that would install it, and give you two ad-free weeks of use of GetRight. Gosh, how about a free dead skunk, too?

According to the page it sent me to, one reason for the upgrade is to take out the banner ads served by Radiate. Their agreement has ended. Things are tough all over in the Internet ad business.

"Oh and what was that about bonzai buddy?"

Take the annoyance factor of MS Word's 'Clippy', and multiply it by 10. He tells you jokes, juggles, and asks if you need this or that, and jumps around the desktop while you're trying to work. It crashes games, not on purpose of course, it's just a system hog and a poorly written program. It's spyware. It runs in the background, even if you shut it down. It took a concentrated effort, including fiddling with the Windows Registry, to completely get rid of it. In short, I've never seen a more annoying, pain-in-the-butt program. I would almost call it a virus. Stay faaaaar, far away from Bonzai Buddy.

DeanCo--

Ooops, that's BonziBUDDY.

http://images.bonzi.com/advertising/bonzibuddyfreeb.asp

(Be sure to click 'Cancel' once you're finished checking it out. They do the warez thing of wanting to make BB your home page, but they don't really make it clear that they're doing that, heheh.)

DeanCo--

I have BonziBUDDY on my PC. My kids like it, so I have to put up with it. Of course he's always disabled when I use the computer. He is highly annoying.

To nuke gator, just use adaware. Detects and nukes gator, and apparently other such spyware.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/aaw.html is the url.