You're too easy gonzo. nuts? wives? whats next? nanny nanny boo boo? or are you gonna go "confucy" on my ass? lol
Hell Puppy & vick, to answer some of your questions, our toolbar is designed primarily to help build the iSearch.com brand and we have millions of active & perfectly happy users. We have letters of thank you telling us how much they like our popup blocker and the results that we provide. The zoom feature is very helpful to people with bad vision (or people with good vision on bad web pages). I encourage friends and family to use it, because it is what it says it is.
The uninstall is easy and automatic. we make money off of it from the dropdown menu that says "Hot Offers" next to the zoom tool and from the searches that are made from the toolbar. We also occasionally inject an advertisement into their web browser, but it is not contextually or behaviorally targeted, which is the sacrifice we make in order to avoid being defined as "spyware" because I believe that spyware will become regulated very soon.
There are more nuances to the toolbar that I wont go into because they really aren't worth discussing, but some of the things we DON'T do include harvesting email addresses, bundling other people's software with our software, changing dns servers, redirecting searches from other sites, highlighting key words, changing link codes, taking affiliate credit away from affiliates, wrapping users media in DRM, and on and on and on. We have chosen to take a VERY high road with our toolbar.
Despite all the whining and complaining we keep hearing, we have managed to do the virtually impossible and turn worthless shit adult traffic into very profitable non-adult traffic.
Am I on a quest to become a "player" in the search and software markets? You bet. Judging from the Alexa charts that Oprano is so fond of, I'd say we're doing just fine. Vick, watching the monkeys on GFY jump around hasn't impacted our business in even the slightest, yesterday was a fantastic day for every program/product I am involved in and today is looking to be even better. Real businessmen and women care most about their bottom line.
Hell Puppy, Gator/Claria is spyware, it tracks your surfing habits and builds behavioral profiles of you and advertises to you based upon your patterns and what sites you are currently surfing. It is also adware. gator/claria has been sued repeatedly by companies who dont like gator's contextual advertising. they have yet to be sued by a user or in any way sanctioned by a governmental body. keep your eye on the ball though (read:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,...w=wn_story_top5 ). I dont think they or their underwriters really care what anybody *thinks*.
Serge, i was working at 4pm yesterday. if you taped it i'd be interested in seeing it, but my experience is that just like shows on "porn" or shows on "spam" the media likes to sensationalize things to appeal to their audience. jmho.
CJ, we aren't "bragging" about anything, if you think responding to people's rants on boards is bragging then so be it.
Gonzo, if you have 17 years in IT experience you should have had the time to pull your head out of your ass long enough to re-read my explanation of the difference between spyware and adware. Talk to cj about hidden billing and lifetime memberships. If you'd like to bring that up, she knows more about it than almost anybody.
I'm not going to spend my days posting and pissing with you on this subject, i think you're a sad man because you have nothing to do with your day except spam and focus on what other people do for a living.
I'll give you a free business lesson though, if you want to make money, start doing something (anything) rather than just being a loudmouth and whining to people on icq about how you wish you'd done things differently. You're am embarassment to Oprano and your ridiculous little tiffs with "confucy" are 99% of the reason that I and most of the readers will always think you're an idiot.